The week's comedy trivia

• Here we go, it’s him again:
  • Russell Brand: ‘I wish I had gone further. I wish I had been in more trouble at school. I wish I had taken more drugs. I wish I had been rude to more people. I wish I had been sacked from more jobs.'
  • Russell Brand has been begging Celebrity Big Brother winner Chantelle Houghton for a date.
  • Russell Brand says he called his autobiography My Booky Wook ‘because it makes me smile and I thought if people are rude about it, they're going to have to say “My Booky Wook” while they are being rude about it. It will undermine the haters’.
  • Russell Brand says James Bond star Daniel Craig ‘is a challenge to my heterosexuality’ when they both appear on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross tonight. ‘If I knew I was about to die I'd be out there chatting up Daniel Craig. I'm going to give him such a big cuddle, that man. I could be a vicious Bond girl!"
  • Russell Brand has also made friends with Morrissey, saying: ‘I love that bloke, I've been emailing him, he calls me Wussell.’
  • And he has been making amends with his neighbours in Hampstead, North London, who had been worried about the stories about the effect of his much-publicised lifestyle on their genteel existence. He performed a gig for just 70 people this week, in aid of local charity the Mayhew Animal Home, raising £2,000. Angela Humphery, a neighbour of Brand’s, said: ‘He talked about how his cat’s got a diamante-studded collar. It was terrific.’

• Jennifer Saunders says: ‘Stand-up is and always has been macho. It's very difficult for women to break into it.’

• Heather Mills’s spokeswoman isn’t happy that Frank Skinner is doing gags about her, including material about the leg she lost. ‘Is that the best material he could come up with?’ she harrumphed. ‘I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy to lose a leg. Comedians are a different species.’

• Talking of Skinner, his decision to extend the interval of his show on Wednesday to show the England football match backfired when the dismal squad limped out of Euro 08. ‘The fans were already miserable,’ he later said of his audience. ‘It was like performing on the Titanic. I'm feeling terrible. I’m gutted, actually.’

• Stand-up - and Chortle podcaster - Ray Peacock has collapsed with exhaustion after working seven weeks without a day off. Doctors have told him not to work for a while, so there will be no podcast on Monday.

• Julian Barratt says of his relationship with Boosh co-star Noel Fielding: ‘I suppose there is a level of homosexual tension between us. We’ve never explored it in life, but it’s always there like the elephant in the room – we never mention it.’

• Dannii Minogue went to see Pam Ann, the air hostess creation of Australian comedian Caroline Reid, at London’s Shaw Theatre this week.

• Ricky Gervais says he receives regular phone texts from Princes William and Harry after exchanging numbers at the Princess Diana memorial concert. ‘I still get texts, little quotes and that from the boys which is weird. Harry said, ”Give us your number”. When I told him he said, “Don’t give me a false one!”’, like I don’t want the royal family bothering me! He’s really funny Harry. He’s just like a normal bloke.’

• Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins say they share the same favourite song: Misty by Johnny Mathis.

SOURCES: Russell Brand stories - Daily Telegraph, Sunday People, Kingston Guardian, BBC, BBC, Camden New Journal. Others - Daily Telegraph, Sunday Mirror, Glasgow Daily Record, Chortle, NME, Chortle , ITV1’s This Morning, The Guardian

Published: 23 Nov 2007