The week's comedy trivia

• Sarah Silverman is working on the next series of her US show with writers who ‘love farting, shitting, and simulating gay sex’.

• Jim Davidson’s up to his usual, sensitive tricks. In Swansea this week he said excited mentally handicapped people ‘howled like wolves’ and said Sikhs ‘bandaged’ their heads because they were heavy drinkers.

• Ben Elton: ‘I’ve never been cool, but I quite like to be popular.’

• Eddie Izzard’s advice to up-and-coming comedians is: ‘Rehearse a whole lot, have a big ego about it and don’t care if anybody likes you or not.’

• John Cleese was evacuated from his hotel room in Boston, Massachusetts, last week because of a fire scare.

• According to the gossip website Holy Moly!, Bill Oddie and his wife stormed into a Turkish restaurant brandishing a local paper and excitedly declaring to the baffled waiter: ‘Your name is Hassan and we claim our free dinner!’ Even though the paper did not make any such offer of free food – and the waiter’s name was not Hassan – the couple were very insistent, and took their seats, awaiting their nosh. Ten minutes later, 'Hassan' walked past their table on his way home. He paused and placed a large cucumber between them, then sauntered out.

• Australian musical comic Tim Minchin says: ‘I'm not a coke-and-bitches kind of guy. I try to offset the high of being on stage by being as boring as possible.’

• David Walliams says he’s ‘a serious Spice Girls fan’. ‘I love great pop music and they were - are - a great pop act,’ he adds. And to prove the point, he’s dressed up as Posh for this week’s Heat magazine. Click here for the gruesome shot.

• Jerry Seinfeld thinks what he might need to boost his creativity is ‘a big, juicy flop’ – but he says he doesn’t want it to be his new animation, Bee Movie: 'I don't want to spend that much time on a flop.’

• Steve Martin’s favourite letter is G

SOURCES:Exclaim (Canada), The Sun, BBC Breakfast News, Tulsa World, Melbourne Age, Holy Moly!, Brisbane Courier-Mail, The Sun/Heat, The Guardian, CNN

Published: 2 Nov 2007