The week's comedy trivia

• Armando Iannucci employs a ‘swearing expert’ on The Thick Of It, to ensure the scripts come back with ‘the most creative swearing’.

• After mocking Keith Richards so thoroughly in Stella Street, John Sessions was a bag of nerves when he finally met the veteran Stone. ‘I was so nervous, my mind went blank and I couldn't think of anything to say,’ Sessions recalls. ‘So I just blurted out the most ridiculous question, “What was it like working with Jean-Luc Godard?”.’ Keith replied: 'He was French.'

• Rhona Cameron plays centre-back for her local football team, Camden FC.

• Sacha Baron Cohen’s fiancée Isla Fisher says she fancies him as Borat. ‘There's nothing sexier than a big handlebar moustache,’ she said. ‘Call me crazy.’

• Elvis Presley was a huge Monty Python fan, his girlfriend Linda Thompson has revealed. She said The King would force her to stay up all night watching the episodes ‘and doing all the voices, which is mind-boggling. He’d even do the ladies’ voices’. His favourite sketch was apparently Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink and he even took to addressing people as ‘squire.’

• Dom Joly says his Cotswolds house was a Knights Templar hospital – and one of the ten places in the world the Holy Grail could be hidden.

• Robin Ince resents the insinuation he has hung on to Ricky Gervais's coat-tails to help his own career, pointing out that their friendship long predates his fame. 'Why would I have grabbed the coat-tails of someone who merely booked tribute bands at London University?' he says. Talking of Gervais, Ben Stiller says: ‘Ricky Gervais has a problem. He’s not a professional actor as a professional actor would never crack up.’

• Russell Brand has fallen out with a rock band he had wanted to help into the big time – after the singer nicked his garden gnome. Medusa’s Julian Molinero said: ‘We met him at a pub and he promised to help us get a record deal. We were so happy we agreed to play a gig at his house in Islington. But we got wasted. Then the bass player peed on one of his statues. Russell started to lecture us on how much it cost and kicked us out — so I stole his gnome.’

• Things you really need to know #231: If he could be any flavour of ice-cream, Ardal O’Hanlon would be lemon.

SOURCES: The London Paper, The Scotsman, Ham& High, The Sun, Daily Snack, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph/The Mirror, The Sun, Rip It Up, Adelaide

Published: 5 Apr 2007