WTF: Punches thrown at the Fringe

• Mackenzie Crook's most treasured possession is a bonsai oak tree.

• First fisticuffs of the Fringe: American comedian Lewis Schaffer, pictured last night decked a couple of strangers who smashed his phone on the ground. The incident started when Schaffer asked a couple in the Gilded Balloon beer garden if they knew anything about Nokia phones, as his was playing up. Instead, they grabbed it out of his hands and threw it violently to the floor. Instinctively, Schaffer punched the guy to the floor, and when his pal waded in, he punched him out as well, in what one witness called ‘a scene out of StreetFighter’. Security then showed up before the 52-year-old could do any more damage. Schaffer says he has never punched anyone before, adding: ‘The feeling of my fist on his face was the best feeling I have ever felt because I waited so long. They deserved it, and it felt good.’

• Throughout the early Nineties, David Walliams was a very avid fan of the Pet Shop Boys and always sent Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe Valentine cards.

• South London comedy promoter ‘PJ’, who also performs as Robin Banks, is known for his long ponytail… but it does have its disadvantages. During an Edinburgh preview at his Balham venue, managed his own Michael Jackson moment – and set his hair alight. He lent too close to a candle and up it went. Luckily Fraser, one of the performers in the show The 80s Movie Flashback and flatmate of Radio One DJ Scott Mills, spotted what was going on, and managed to put the fire out with his bare hands… without breaking character as Marty McFly from Back To The Future.

• Russell Brand, who's previously spread the word of hare krishna, was seen attending a Methodist church in London this week.

• Odd. Natalie Imbruglia talks to a suitcase voiced by Alan Carr and a beachball voiced by David Walliams:
  

• Steve Misiura, of Brixton, South London, has watched all 238 epsiodes of Freinds back-to-back in an 83 hour 40 minute marathon to get into the Guinness World Records book.

• Loughborough has its very own comedy-loving Banksy. Someone is leaving stencilled images of Eric Morecambe around the Leicestershire town.

• This is fake, we suspect, but still worth a look...
  

• Bobby Carroll says his Fringe venue last year was hidden up a stairwell between a gay bar and a kebab shop at Leith Walk. ‘Being so late at night, the show only ever attracted those trying to escape the rain. Every audience was roughly split 50 per cent damp ned and 50 per cent large sozzled lesbian. Trying to keep these two demographs simultaneously entertained was like spinning plates.’

SOURCES: The Guardian, Chortle, PopBitch, Chortle, Mirror, Metro, Loughborough Echo, YouTube, Glasgow Herald

Published: 7 Aug 2009