WTF: Weekly trivia file

• One of Kayvan Novak’s victims threatened to kill him after being wound up by a prank call on Fonejack. ‘It's amazing how crabby some people are,’ he said.

• Time Out has just conducted a poll of Londoners’ favourite comics. Ricky Gervais came out top, and Stewart Lee second… but something of a surprise at No 3 – ahead of Daniel Kitson, Bill Bailey, Peter Kay and Dara O’Briain is a Glaswegian stand-up who doesn’t much perform in the capital, Janey Godley. Curious coincidence: one of the fans praising her – saying ‘the phrase “one-off” doesn’t even begin to do her justice’ – is Martyn Sadler… which just happens to be the pen name Godley’s webmaster and erstwhile publicist John Fleming has used in the past. Well, if that is him, there’s nothing to stop you voting for your mates... That, incidentally, wasn’t the only gushing accolade in the poll: Fan Nick Scott thought Gervais was nothing less than ‘a modern-day Jesus’. Pretty impressive.

• Russell Brand was once locked out of his house naked after spitting on a lap dancer he’d brought home. ‘I went through a period where I slept with a lot of lap dancers,’ he says. ‘One night, I brought a lap dancer back to my flat. We watched some pornography, had sex, she didn’t come. It was selfish of me but I went off to smoke some heroin. She packed her stuff up really loudly and said: ‘Russell, I’m leaving,’ then slapped me hard across the face. I knew I couldn’t hit her back because she was a woman so I frogmarched her out the door. Then I did a very bad thing. I spat at her. I’m ashamed of it. Unfortunately, as the spit landed, I heard my door shut behind me. [I was] fully naked and I’d just spat on the only person who could help me.’

• Despite such uncool behaviour, Brand says he has been appointed the heir to the Fonz – by none less than Happy Days star Henry Winkler himself. ‘He shook my hand and, with eye contact, nominated me as his natural successor,’ he said.

• Reculsive satirist Chris Morris has paid a visit to the Large Hadron Collider, a five-mile diameter particle accelerator at the CERN physics labs, Switzerland, designed to smack protons together at close to the speed of light. According to another science geek who took the tour with Morris: ‘He’s quite the science junkie and was loaded with questions about quantum mechanics and relativity, which led for an entertaining day.’

• Alistair McGowan says he gets mistaken for Angus Deayton at least a couple of times a week – even by people who’ve just watched him on stage. ‘The other night, a woman who'd seen the show came backstage to get my autograph,’ he said. ‘She had a programme with my photograph in it with my name clearly printed underneath it. When I signed it for her, she said, "Thanks Angus."’ To add insult to injury, Deayton says he never gets mistaken for McGowan.

• From our department of realistic dialogue: In a report in the Sun that Caroline Aherne is to play a barmaid in Craig Cash’s comedy-drama Sunshine, a ‘top telly source’ supposedly said: ‘She’s pulled a few pints in her time but it’s her audience pulling power that has landed her the part.’ Yes, that’s EXACTLY how real people talk…

• British-based Aussie comic Jim Jeffries scored a couple of direct hits as he hosted the NME Awards USA this week. Introducing Sienna Miller to present the inspiration award to Clash legend Mick Jones, he took a pop at her boyfriend, Rhys Ifans, saying: ‘Sienna should get the Inspiration Award because she’s having sex with a man so ugly, she is an inspiration to all ugly men.’ And he had something of a falling-out with Kelly Osbourne, too, after he said sarcastically: ‘I think she'd be famous even if her dad weren't famous - she's just that good.’ And when she spat at him, he came back with: ‘Wow, Kelly Osbourne spitting – that's not what I read on the internet.’

• Michael Palin has a phobia of modern train toilets with sliding doors. ‘I'm convinced I'm going to become entrapped in there for life or else dread the doors will slide open at the worst possible moment,’ he said.

• Alan Carr has branded last week’s Friday Night Project guest Geri Halliwell as ‘boring’. ‘I think all that LA sunshine has gone to her head,’ he said. ‘She was all astrology this, and astrology that. I get bored just talking about it.’

• Everything you say will make you as funny as the top comedians, with this website…

• Gavin & Stacey star Mathew Horne is addicted to orange Chapsticks. ‘But I couldn't find them anywhere,’ he said. ‘So I put a message out on MySpace and the next day 52 arrived.’

SOURCES:MediaGuardian, Time Out/Chortle, Metro, The Sun, Badastronomy.com, The Independent, The Sun, NME, Daily Telegraph, Mirror, Instantrimshot.com, Mirror

Published: 25 Apr 2008