Our new weekly trivia round-up

Welcome to our new weekly round-up of gossipy and utterly trivial press cuttings that we couldn't find any other place for over the past seven days. A version of this column used to appear on the BBC Comedy website under the name 'Friday Filter' before they abandoned their blog set-up.

• I fucked Courtney Love, and all I got was this lousy cravat…  The rock chick is Russell Brand’s latest bedpost notch, if the tabloids are to be believed, and after their night together at Claridge’s in London, Love gave her ‘delicious’ lover the flamboyant neckwear, reportedly saying 'he certainly deserved it with his performance'. But the usually well-informed Popbitch say the pair never slept together – but it makes good copy for all concerned.

• Scottish comedian Des McLean says he conned box office staff into offering him two tickets to Robbie Williams’s sold-out Ibrox gig by pretending to be Billy Connolly on the phone. But he bottled out at the last minute and confessed all...

• Stand-up Andy Parsons has a cracked thumbnail on his right hand.

• Scrubs star Zach Braff is tired of US tabloids painting him as ‘a male Paris Hilton’. He told David Letterman this week: ‘I lead a pretty boring life: I sit at home, I'm on the internet, I eat cereal, that's a typical night for me. I read online about all the places I've been out partying and all the women I've been out partying with. I'm like, “Wow, I should probably go to that place. It sounds like fun. It sounds like I had a good time there.” I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.’

• David Mitchell and Robert Webb still write in Mitchell’s bedroom, as getting an office, they say. would ‘defeat the whole idea of going into comedy.’

• Mark Steel on Ben Elton: ‘I don’t agree with people who say he’s sold out, because I think he was shit from the day he was born.’

Published: 1 Sep 2006