The week's comedy gossip

• Readers of a nervous disposition might like to look away now. Shazia Mirza is giving up removing her body hair. She says: 'I have decided that enough is enough and I have decided to just grow it, grow it like grass and try to live with it. It's about time hair on women was celebrated not condemned. A woman can definitely be sexy in a pair of Jimmy Choos and a pair of hairy legs, she can be sexy in a Wonderbra and hairy armpits, and she can be very hot in a mini skirt and hairy arms. The public just needs to see that's OK.'

• Ricky Gervais: ‘I think it’s easy to become famous in England. The leveller is, can you cut it, can you make it global, can you do a product that travels.’

• Jerry Seinfeld has been ordered to pay $100,000 to a New York estate agent for commission on the $4million house he bought. He originally failed to pay because he complained Tamara Cohen refused to show him around the property when he wanted. Only problem was she is a devout Jew – and wouldn’t work on the Sabbath when he wanted to go househunting.

• The Boosh's Noel Fielding spend New Year's Eve watching The Killers in Los Angeles with Courtney Love.

• If you’re doing some filming for ITV2, you might as well get something out of it. Isabel Fay was bought a new pair of pink furry slippers by the crew on new show Comedy Cuts after complaining the high-heeled shoes she had to wear for her character, magician’s assistant Annette Cadabra, were killing her. She’s wearing them whenever her feet are out of shot.

• Here’s one to get the speculation going. From the gossip website Holy Moly: ‘A Mole's girlfriend was once involved with a northern character-based comedian (but which one?). The sex life was fairly dull, until he took her on a walking route around the Brighton and Hove area. Over the next few weeks they began a routine which would be repeated until the relationship ended. On reaching a deserted field he would demand that she ran a few steps ahead of him. Then, on his command, she would be obliged to squat and piss in her pants. Only on completion of the urination would he be able to gain an erection, and then penetration and full sex would occur.’

• Russell Brand gets in touch with his spiritual side: ‘Hare Krishna devotees taught me reality is an illusion and that we ought to be bold when it comes to haircuts. Look at them, they look great.’

Sources: BBC News, Quick Stop Entertainment, Chicago Sun-Times, ITV, Holy Moly, The Sun

Published: 19 Jan 2007