The week’s comedy trivia...

‘Stand-up keeps getting slagged off because there are so many bad people doing it’
- Sean Hughes.

• Matt Lucas says the thing that first made him think he was gay was… Shakin Stevens. Of seeing the Welsh rocker’s photograph in the Eighties, he recalls: ‘The first time I’d an inkling I was gay was looking at that picture when I was seven. I’m sure the thoughts weren’t sexual, but there was something there.’

• Meanwhile, when Aussie stand-up Brendon Burns was seven he was scarred for life… by a kangaroo. Which tried to shag him. It left a scar on his right eyebrow. He also has another scar on his right shoulder from where a stingray bit him.

• Rowan Atkinson has put his shoulder out – doing a Nazi salute.

• A story from Ed Byrne about the night a very drunk Dara O’Briain tried to hail a taxi home from outside his house. ‘He mistook a police car, with its pretty, flashing light, for a cab. It stopped, Dara got in the back seat, twittering on happily and expecting a ride home. It was then the police noticed that the door to my house had been left open so, they suspected Dara of being the world’s most confused burglar. The next thing I know is I’m being woken by a police officer standing in my bedroom. “Do you know this man?” she says, pointing at Dara. I thought about telling her this was the bloke who’d been presenting Have I Got News for You? on telly the previous night, but she wouldn’t have believed me, so I let it be…’

• Russell Brand needed some preparation before appearing in bra and pants for the Little Britain Live Comic Relief Special: 'I was in the dressing room with Jonathan Ross,’ he says, ‘and he had the nous to tell me to put one of those chicken fillet breast enhancers that ladies use down my trousers before I went on. That spared me.' And in further example of him seeking physical enhancement, Brand has just hired a personal trainer.

• Talking of Comic Relief, Catherine Tate reckons Tony Blair is ‘one of the finest comic actors of his generation’. Just what you want in a Prime Minister…

• Stewart Lee issued a press release after Daniel Kitson had to drop out of next Thursday’s Bloomsbury Theatre benefit for Resonance FM, headlined, in Onion style: ‘Kitson to replace self with recording of self or letter,’ and mocking, just slightly, the Channel 4 rundown that placed Kitson as the 27th funniest stand-up. It read: ‘His place has been taken by Chris Addison, the world's 66th funniest stand-up. This leaves a deficit of some 38 degrees of funniness, but Kitson has agreed to send a recorded and/or written message of goodwill, containing some humorous content, which experts of the type consulted by the C4 show think may actually be funnier, in context, than Kitson himself, throwing the whole carefully calibrated 100 Greatest Stand-Up's Of All Time Survey into chaos. The bill also features the world's 41st best comedian Stewart Lee.’

• Hugh Dennis’s parents used to take their cat for walkies.

• Ardal O’Hanlon on writing a novel: ‘Your body changes shape - you become like this kind of hunched up figure like sort of in the shape of the letter G. You grow all sorts of tumours and far too much facial hair…’

• Headline in some American newspapers yesterday: ‘Manning Tries Hand At Comedy’. Turns out its not Bernard, but some sportsman appearing on Saturday Night Live.

• Oh, and our lawyers say we should probably explain Rowan Atkinson’s injury-inducing Nazi salutes came while filming Mr Bean’s Holiday.

SOURCES: Sydney Morning Herald, Attitude, Metro, Glasgow Herald, Sunday Times, Daily Express/The Sun, BBC Breakfast, Stewart Lee, The Times, ABC Australia, Seattle Post Intelligencer

Published: 23 Mar 2007