The week's comedy trivia

As frivolous as tinsel, here's this week round-up of pointless comedy stories you may have missed

• Boy George – who admits to regularly using rent boys and cocaine - apparently doesn’t thinks Matt Lucas – who’s in a stable relationship - is a good example of homosexuality. And so when he and David Walliams crossed paths during the recording of Channel 4’s Big Fat Quiz of the Year, sparks were likely to fly. The ex-Culture Club singer asked Walliams: ‘How was Matt's wedding?’, to which the stony-faced Walliams pointedly replied: ‘Very nice thank you. It was great you weren't there.’ Walliams later explained: ‘There's a background to this. I wouldn't be mean for the sake of it.’

• Stand-up Russell Howard’s New Year resolution is to stop playing with his genitals when he’s bored.

• The headline on the latest Russell Brand kiss-and-tell says it all. ‘We had two hours of wild, fantastic sex then he popped a gum shield into his mouth, pulled rainbow-coloured woollen booties on and went to sleep In his bedroom, surrounded by six mirrors, he wore a fluffy dressing gown & Y-fronts & cooed: “Oooh, I'm attracted to you sex-wise..”’ Except that he apparently ‘snores like an elephant’, too.

• Boyband McFly have been to see to see Ricky Gervais about maybes appearing in the next series of Extras. ‘It was so exciting for us to meet him,’ said band member Tom Fletcher. ‘Atfirst we were scared be he opened up and showed us a polite, serious side you never see on TV.’

• A type of orchid has been named after Jimmy Carr. It looks like this.

• When writers on the Christmas special of The Thick of It decided the Opposition needed a nickname for chief Labour spin doctor character Malcolm Tucker, they chose Malcolm Hamish McDeath. They later found out Gordon Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride is known to Tories as Damian McNightmare. Proof that, in Whitehall, comedy writers can’t do any better than real life.

• Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey is selling Dylan Thomas' favourite pub - Browns Hotel, at Laugharne, South Wales – two years after buying it for £670,000. He’s now asking £1.5million after failing to live up to his promises to do it up.

• Dave Spikey says: ‘To see the positive impact that recycling can have go to Hyning Scout Wood, near Carnforth, the perfect place for an idyllic winter walk this Christmas.’ Right you are, Dave.

• When internet gossip site Holy Moly merely mentioned in passing that Al Murray would be at the Jools Holland Hootenany, the comic fired back a suitably blunt denial, which they happily repeated: ‘Oi! I’m not going this year, you internet cunt!’ You don’t get language like that on the Times letters page.

SOURCES: Metro, Time Out, Sunday Mirror, Thelondonpaper, Chortle, The Independent, Press Association, Lancashire Evening Post, Holy Moly

Published: 22 Dec 2006