Another week of comedy trivia

• John Inman always preferred light entertainment to serious acting, explaining: ‘I’m a tits-and-feathers man really.’ But fame almost eluded him. When the BBC’s head of light entertainment saw the pilot of Are You Being Served, he told the sitcom’s creator David Croft: ‘All right, you can do it, but I don’t want the poof in it.’ Luckily for Inman, Croft stuck to his guns.

• Rumours abound in Australia that Isla Fisher – Sacha Baron Cohen’s fiancée – is pregnant

• It’s a literature prize, for Christ’s sake, so you’d have thought they might chose their words carefully. In their citation for Peter Kay’s book on the Galaxy book of the year shortlist, judges made reference to the ‘enormity’ of his fan base. That’s ‘enormity’ as in ‘the extreme scale of something perceived as bad or morally wrong… a grave crime or sin’. He may be a bit mainstream for some tastes, but liking Peter Kay is surely not that bad.

• Meanwhile, Kay’s literary nod has opened up an unlikely row, thanks to fellow nominee Richard Dawkins, who has angrily taken issue with one line in The Sound Of Laughter in which the comic admits: ‘I believe in a God of some kind, in some sort of higher being. Personally I find it very comforting.’ God Delusion author Dawkins raged: ‘How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it “comforting”. What matters is what is true and we discover the truth by evidence and not by what we would like.’ Calm down, dear, he’s only a comic…

• Billy Connolly has written a song called I Wish I Could Be A Little Bit More Like Michael Palin.

• Ricky Gervais loses his sense of humour when it comes to foxhunting. ‘I wanted to batter those people with a fucking spade,’ he said of those who take part. ‘I don't understand why loads of inbreds get the fucking horn when they see a fox cowering in fear.’

• ‘I would be good to know what it’s like to have no tits and run really fast.’ Dawn French says she wants to be Paula Radcliffe.

• Jim Carrey hired a lookalike on a recent visit to Israel. He got the former shepherd to check into a five-star hotel in his name as a decoy for fans and paparazzi, so he could enjoy the Holy Land in peace.

• When offered a drink by a journalist, the venerable I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue chairman Humphrey Lyttelton politely asked for a soft drink. But he added: ‘When I say soft drink, I mean a small Scotch not a large Scotch, which is a hard drink’

SOURCES: The Sun/The Guardian; Sunday Times, Perth; Chortle; The Guardian; Quickstop Entertainment; Contactnews/thelondonpaper; LondonLite; thelondonpaper; Daily Telegraph

Published: 9 Mar 2007