The week's comedy trivia

• Del Boy falling through the bar is, of course, the funniest thing mankind has ever created. So it’s understandable that the BBC charges a hefty £2,000 to show the clip – a price Sky's Soccer AM decided was too high to use in an introduction for guest Roger Lloyd Pack, who played Trigger. But it’s surely only right the clip should be expensive - because heaven forbid it becomes overplayed and tediously overfamiliar.
  

• Graham Norton is reportedly on a list of stars Victoria Beckham has banned from attending the Spice Girls reunion concerts. Lucky bastard.

• Ricky Gervais turned down the chance to appear on Sesame Street., even though he admits it would be ‘a cool thing to do’.

• Alan Davies says a common misconception of him is ‘one is that I'm really nice and the other is that I'm quite horrible. I never get any middle ground. The truth is that I'm quite nice and a bit horrible.’ Certainly one bloke who encountered him in a pub last week decided the QI star fell into one of the extremes, concluding: ‘The guy is a massive knob.’ For why, read the post he made on the Gumtree message boards here.

• Bobby Ball went to a service at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Crosby, Merseyside at the weekend. Church secretary Eleanor Hamilton said: ‘Clearly and sincerely, he challenged young and old alike to a deeper commitment to God and a greater effort to reach the people of the neighbourhood for the Lord Jesus.’ Not quite as pithy a catchprhase as, ‘Rock on, Tommy’ is it?

• Jennifer Saunders has explained why she and Dawn French turned down OBEs in 2001. ‘If I felt I deserved a Damehood I'd accept it,’ she said. ‘At the time, we felt that we were being paid very well to have a lot of fun. It didn't seem right somehow. We didn't deserve a pat on the back. It felt a bit fake to stand alongside people who devoted their lives to truly worthy causes.’

• Peter Kay turned up in an unusual story this week – the arrest of Newcastle United midfielder Joey Barton for alleged assault. New Zealand’s Herald on Sunday reported that the Bolton comic was the soccer star’s mentor, and had spent 90 minutes on the phone to him the night his arrest before, discussing his troubles. ‘My support for Joey will never waver,’ the paper quoted the comedian saying. ‘I feel devastated that this side of Joey is the side people see when I am privileged to know a different man.’ One small problem, it isn’t Peter Kay the chubby funnyman who’s been helping Barton, but Peter Kay the boss of Sporting Chance, the clinic which treats sportsmen with addiction problems…

• Stand-up Matt Kirshen says going on American reality show Last Comic Standing ‘felt like getting a massage from a burly man. I know it’s doing me good, but I still feel a bit dirty’.

SOURCES: MediaGuardian; Monsters and Critics; Time magazine; Independent/Gumtree; Crosby Herald, Source magazine; Herald On Sunday, New Zealand; The List

Published: 4 Jan 2008