As Taskmaster returns for a new series tonight, a clip of show's stalwart, Alex Horne, continues to impress fans...as well as fellow host Greg Davies.
It would seem that comedian Alex Horne isn’t just good at making people laugh for a living, he’s also surprisingly quick at mental arithmetic too.
Although he doesn’t have a great deal of mathematics in his past education after studying classics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, he was a contestant on Countdown in 2008 for four episodes.
Referred to as ‘the human calculator’, the clip shows Alex working out the sum of random numbers being shouted at him by the other contestants.
Actress Charlotte Ritchie and comedians Jamali Maddix, Lee Mack, Mike Wozniak and Sarah Kendall all joined him on the show and put his skills to the test.
Greg Davies grabbed a calculator to make sure his arithmetic was correct, and to everyone's surprise, he got it spot on.
The sum was as follows:
13,243 + 8,000 ÷ 20 + 1
Do you think you know the answer? While at a glance it may seem relatively simple, it's pretty impressive considering he's just being told the number in quick succession without being written down.
In the clip, Greg Davies said: “Before you give me the answer, take your ear piece out”, insinuating the comedian would struggle with the sum.
But Alex Horne was very confident in his answer of “13,644” which stunned Greg into silence.
The crowd cheered and the other contestants looked pretty flabbergasted yet impressed.
Greg concluded by jokingly saying: “That’s genuinely the best thing you’ve ever done, and I don’t mean on this show.”
Some viewers were impressed with his skills, but others weren’t so easily convinced.
One YouTube user commented: “If only Greg would have asked for proof of the Riemann hypothesis.”
Another user said: “His little brain must be so full with the entirety of maths."
