If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then these particular beholders, plural, likely have a collective crook in the neck. Greg Davies , all 6’8” of him, is a hunk, and all of us are – in a literal sense – looking up at him adoringly. The Taskmaster host, whose new stand-up tour Full Fat Legend goes on sale tomorrow, has added an unlikely string to his bow: that of heartthrob, sex symbol. According to the internet, it’s official. Everyone says so. The same comedian who once admitted, “I’m a middle-aged man with a belly, and a lot of mirrors in my flat to remind me of that” now possesses a level of magnetism (a level of attainability too, as he’s frequently single) that Tom Cruise would, possibly, kill for. “I find Greg unbelievably magnetic,” says fellow comedian Mae Martin . Martin, a previous guest on the Channel 4 quiz show, very much had eyes only for him. “I don’t know what it is,” they said. “I’ve met so many people in my life doing comedy, and I’ve never been more starstruck. For some reason, it’s like he’s the most famous man on earth in my heart. I think I just fancy him.” Martin is not alone. There’s hordes. Davies, 55, is one of those comedians whose true calling came late in life. Like Romesh Ranganathan, he spent most of his formative adult years as a schoolteacher. By his own telling, he made for a somewhat stern one, teaching drama in secondary schools before finally making the transition to television in the early 2000s. His first mainstream hit was The Inbetweeners (2008), in which he played, fittingly, a harried headmaster. This role as educator is something he returned to with his own sitcom, Man Down (2013), in which he essentially cornered the market in very tall, middle-aged, and slightly hapless men with a vulnerable side. People like vulnerable sides. Read Next Taskmaster's Alex Horne: 'I wouldn't make a joke about the
Queen dying' But he staged his ultimate televisual coup d’état with Taskmaster, the
comedy quiz show that requires its panellists to complete a series of deliberately silly challenges. He developed it with Alex Horne, and the pair had originally taken it to Channel 4 in 2015, who turned it down, allowing Dave to step in. There, it became such a huge hit that, after nine series, Channel 4 capitulated (and probably begged), offering them carte blanche. It’s now one of the most popular TV shows in the country. Taskmaster is a role that Davies was born for: the notionally foreboding host, filling out every inch of the throne upon which he sits, but who all-too frequently cracks up, incapable of keeping the glint from his eye. This glint, it’s not gone unnoticed. “Genuinely only recently I developed a massive crush on the Taskmaster himself and have consequently watched every TV show he is in, all the interviews, all his guest appearances,” read one recent Reddit post. “I cannot get over him and just wondering if anyone else is hopelessly gone over how hot Greg Davies actually is.” The absence of a question mark here might be deliberate rather than careless: not query so much as assumed fact. Elsewhere online, there’s a
YouTube showreel entitled “greg davies being flagrantly bi for 9 minutes” that features him camping it up with a variety of comedy co-stars. It has over 800,000 views. One comment reads: “My own bisexuality intensifies everytime Greg smiles.” A good portion of his appeal revolves around that aforementioned vulnerability, which he does not feel moved to conceal. “I do seem to have the ability of pretending I know what I’m doing, that I’m in control,” he said in 2020. “But as any of my close
Friends will tell you, that is so far from the truth. In real life, I’m freewheeling, my fingernails scraping, just barely holding on.” You’d never get such humility from Tom Cruise. If this elevation into sex symbol status has surprised Davies himself, then just imagine the impact it must have had on those who consider him their peer. A nation of middle-aged men, teachers mostly, each of them perennially put-upon, a little stressed and a little sweaty, have just found themselves a new hero to worship. The Full Fat Legend tour goes on sale tomorrow at 10am ( gregdavies.co.uk )