Bruno vs Mossad

The weekly trivia file

When she was a child, stand-up Isy Suttie wanted to be an albino so ‘I could dye my hair any colour without having to bleach it first.’

Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher isn’t the first to be duped by Sacha Baron Cohen. But you might have thought he, of all people, would have been more eagle-eyed… as he was a Mossad spy for 12 years. The commentator was fooled into taking part into a mock interview about the Middle East by Baron Cohen’s Bruno character for his upcoming film. Although the interviewer spent several minutes confusing Hammas and hummus, and claimed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse’, Alpher admitted: ‘We played it straight and square... We smiled at the idiotic questions and answered them patiently.’

When stand-up comic Silky played a gig for servicemen in Kosovo, he was almost surprised to find the audience included a cousin he hadn’t seen for many years. ‘There were nearly tears,’ said a spokesman for Combined Services Entertainment.

Curb Your Enthusiasm star Jeff Garlin says ‘Curb's a very English show. We think of Fawlty Towers a lot - having a lead character not being inherently likable, that was one of the first shows to embrace that.’

Chortle was a bit surprised and concerned to receive an email this week headed: ‘Office star suffers heart attack’. It was, thankfully, only a rather bad-taste ruse to plug a music video starring Ewan Macintosh. But it worked – here’s the vid:

Stand-up Dan Nightingale isn’t exactly bigging up his chances at Edinburgh. ‘I'm not going to worry about reviews and awards because, frankly, I don't think it's going to go that well,’ he says of his show, Geronimo. Find out if that’s false modesty or not when he comperes the 28 acts packed into Chortle’s Fast Fringe showcase at London’s Arts Theatre on Monday.