Parent, author, screenwriter, successful stand-up, and the patron of several charities, Lucy Beaumont is a demonstrably capable and driven adult woman, and yet to judge by her appearance on the current series of Taskmaster, she absolutely was brought up by a pack of wolves. Excellent, baffling wolves*.
*Lucy Beaumont was actually raised in Hull by her playwright mother Gill Adams and what sound like some lovely grandparents.
In any other Taskmaster grouping, Australian comedian Sam Campbell would be the glorious weirdo (contestants on the show generally break down into one of five categories: Elder Statesperson Who’s Enjoyably a Bit Above It All, Glorious Weirdo, Enthusiastic Lovely, Wild Card and Evil Genius). Sam Campbell sees the world in a way that’s all his own. His speech is peppered with anachronisms, he delivers dark comments with a boyish smile, and is full of surprises – asked if he had any questions for the Taskmaster mid one task, he shot back “Are you a child of divorce?”. It’s impossible to predict what Campbell will do, say or think next, only that it will be funny.
And then there’s Lucy Beaumont.
Lucy Beaumont isn’t just consistently funny on Taskmaster, she’s also consistently fascinating. Her grasp on what’s happening during tasks is perhaps the slightest of any contestant in the show’s history, but she still seems to be having a marvellous time, which means the audience is too. Her brow might furrow at a simple instruction, but her imagination is clearly teeming with – well, mostly nightmares by the look of it, but whatever it is, there’s no shortage.
There’s also no shortage of stories from her childhood that give the impression Beaumont could equally be from Hull or from Narnia. She’s both Morwenna Banks’ Little Girl character and a dark lord of the underworld, giggling through the unsettling, confused by the mundane, and absolutely, unimprovably comfortable with herself.
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