The Fringe awards no one wants to win

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• 'Critics have knocked me for targeting society's lowest common denominator I believe that television was, and still is, the only medium that can truly reach society's lowest common denominator and entertain those people who maybe can't afford a movie or a play. So why not reach them and do it well?' Garry Marshall, who died this week.

• Comic Will Franken, pictured plans to name and shame the Edinburgh Fringe performers he thinks are playing it too safe this festival. He intends to hand out Defining The Norm Awards on the last weekend and says: 'Shows will be judged on conformity to industry standards, marketable status, adherence to shared political opinion, and audience pandering. Special categories for shows consisting of safe targets, stifled free speech, and lack of original or perceptive messages will also be recognised, in addition to most marketably correct and expensive flyer and poster combination'. He said the awards were a reaction to the Fringe's official slogan: Defying the norm, when so many performers don't.

• David Walliams went to see The Pet Shop boys with Barbara Windsor on Thursday.

• Tom Rosenthal was left writhing in agony on the set of Friday Night Dinner after roughhousing with Simon Bird. The comic and actor had undergone reconstructive surgery on his knee, but the pair didn't go gentle on it while shooting the scene. 'I was pulling Simon upstairs, he closed the door on me and my knee buckled,' Rosenthal told today's Metro. 'I was screaming in agony. I think the crew thought I'd died.'

• Cute but creepy… this has to be the image of the week:

This is so cute - a tribute to local legend #FrankSidebottom from pupils at Chapelfield Primary in Bury. pic.twitter.com/tNdlJFSDSP
— Beverley Dixon (@celebpa) July 20, 2016

• Channel 5 is about to step back into comedy, with its semi-improvised series Borderline, set among immigration staff. Writer Michael Orton-Toliver certainly has first-hand experience of the system – having once been deported from the UK. He said: said: 'I got kicked out of the UK. I was flying in from Amsterdam where I was a resident at the time, and a Border Agent was having a bad day and detained me overnight. The next morning, they removed me from the United Kingdom. They put me in handcuffs, confiscated my passport, and put me on a plane.' But the fine, geographically-savvy, frontline staff originally wrote on the paperwork that he should be sent back to 'Amsterdam, Germany', leaving Orton-Toliver to point out that they were trying to deport him to a fictional place.

• Eagle-eyed Mock The Week fans took to Twitter earlier this series after spotting a fly land on Dara O Briain's head.
Mock The Week fly
So in the next episode – which belatedly aired last night, having been postponed because of the EU referendum – producers cunningly dropped in a blink-and-you'll-miss it gag, cutting away to the host with a spider on his noggin…
dara spider

• Helen Lederer once peed in the car park in Neal Street in Covent Garden.

Tweets of the week

Just had a run in with a grammar nazi. Turned out to be horribly anti semantic :(
— vivienne clore (@Vivienneclore) July 18, 2016

How can Jeremy Corbyn be doing so badly in the polls? Everyone in my London based alternative theatre company loves him.
— Tips For Actors (@Tips4Actors) July 21, 2016