Deborah Meaden just one of the names lured in for a Taskmaster festive special

Channel 4 has a comedy New Year cracker for the schedules.

As a New Year dawns, the supreme TaskmasterGreg Davies and his doting assistant Little Alex Horne welcome five famous faces from all corners of the entertainment world to step up and face a set of ludicrous challenges in the latest instalment of the one-off special, ‘Taskmaster’s New Year Treat’ on Channel 4.

Set to air over the festive season, this unlikely quintet are united by a single aim – to impress the Taskmaster and task like they’ve never tasked before.

The courageous contestants set to compete in the most surreal and cutthroat competition on television are: Entrepreneur and star of Dragon’s Den Deborah Meaden, Mercury Prize and MOBO Award nominated music artist Kojey Radical, BAFTA-winning actor Lenny Rush, TV presenter, adventurer, author and wildlife expert Steve Backshall, and radio and television presenter Zoe Ball.

Each one of them are vying for points and scrapping for the Taskmaster’s fleeting praise while avoiding acerbic judgement in a bid to lay claim to Greg’s unique Trophy of Eyebrows.

Yesterday it was revealed Taskmaster Christmas Crackers had entirely sold out before they hit the shelves at pre-sale having sold 108,000 crackers.

Now the production team has more than tripled the rate of manufacture and increased the size of production staff to assemble and re-print the crackers numerous times to meet phenomenal demand in time for Christmas. They are currently on sale and can be found on the Taskmaster Store as well as Amazon.

They have become an official No.1 best-seller on Amazon and have been ordered by fans across 45 countries around the globe including in North America, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Iceland among other countries joining in the festive Taskmaster merriment. This totals 450,000 Tasks, 108,000 Jokes, and 1,944,000 printed Pineapples being sent across the world to date.