The week's trivia round-up

• Jerry Seinfeld launched his animated film Bee Movie in Cannes last night, saying: ‘One thing I hate is any kind of movie promotion that smacks of desperation in any way.’ The 53-year-old comic, dressed in black tights and full fuzzy bumblebee suit then launched himself on a cord from the roof of an eight-storey hotel down to the beach, arms and legs flailing.Click here to watch him on CNN.

• Russell Brand has posed in a bikini and Hawaiian garland with the words ‘Noel, I love you too’ scrawled across his midriff as a joke for pal Noel Gallagher. If you’ve a strong stomach, the image is here.

• When Ed Byrne and his girlfriend of four years, publicist Claire Walker, decided to get engaged, what better place than New Zealand, where he’s currently on tour? At the other side of the planet, they could make their commitment away from the glaring spotlight of the comedy circuit, allowing them to tell friends and family in their own time. But then Byrne, being a typical comic, couldn’t help but share his good news with his audience in Christchurch, even dragging his new fiancé reluctantly on to the stage. Unknown to them, there was a local reviewer at the gig, and so their secret is blown.

• Untrusting of Adam Hills’s reputation as the nicest guy in stand-up, the Sydney Morning Herald tried to find his dark side. What makes him angry, they asked. The reply: ‘Myself… I get really shitty at myself. If I forget somebody's birthday I really take it to heart.’ What a callous hate-filled bastard he really is inside…

• Simpsons creator Matt Groening famously based Homer on his own Dad, also called Homer, who you might have thought would take exception to his portrayal as a fat, drunk, lazy child-strangling oaf – but not a bit of it. There has been just one scene in the 400 episodes that botherd him – when the Simpsons' car broke down in the desert, and Homer made Marge carry the flat tyre back to town. Groening said: ‘My dad said Homer shouldn't have done that. He was very perturbed by it. I said, '”But he strangles his kids! You aren't bothered by that.”’

• David Mitchell has again countered criticism of his and Robert Webb’s Apple ads, complaining that the gripes come from ‘people who don’t have to make their living as freelance comedians’. ‘It’s part of the business,’ he said. ‘Comedians do ads.’

SOURCES: CNN, The Sun, Stuff.co.nz, Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun, The Times

Published: 18 May 2007