Weekly Trivia File

• ‘Pamela Stephenson says: ‘People always think that being married to Billy means that I get non-stop Billy Connolly concerts. It's not nearly as exciting as that. It's boring sometimes and he would say the same. Actually, Billy is quite a quiet person. He's a little reclusive.’

• American stand-up Dane Cook has produced plenty of crap in his time… but now it’s his dog’s faecal matter that’s landed him in trouble. He has been evicted his Hollywood apartment because his pet chihuahua kept shitting in the grounds. The comedian repeatedly ignored warnings to clean up after it, and was slapped with an eviction notice this week. But he’s now fighting the case, because he fear moving will lose him his ‘creative muse’ (apparently he does have one), which he gets from living in the same complex where John Belushi and Steve Martin once lived. In his court documents, the star says: I know that the presence of those that have lived there before me affects me deeply and provides me with inspiration. In the same way that writers can get writer’s block, comedians can really easily run out of ideas and ‘stories’; I am extremely frightened that this will happen to me if I am forced to move out of my apartment. I’ve seen it happen to other comics, that something interferes with their connection to their creative muse, and it’s destroyed careers.’

• Ricky Gervais may not have won an Emmy, but he has won a prize from The Heath and Hampstead Society for the front garden of his house in North London.

• Stand-up disaster of the week:

• David Walliams had to kiss Sting for a sketch in Little Britain USA… and said he found it ‘strangely enjoyable’.

• Alex Musson, editor of the comedy magazine Mustard, was naturally excited when he saw comedy hero John Cleese in a London bookstore. Not wishing to intrude, but equally unwilling to let the opportunity pass, he gathered the courage to walk over: ‘Um, hello Mr Cleese. I do this comedy magazine...’ he says, offering him a freebie. ‘Oh yes, I'm just buying a copy’ he says – and sure enough he was… Spooky coincidence, or what?

• Alan Carr used to go out with Gok Wan’s boyfriend.

• Meanwhile, he also jokes that he’s trying to steal his namesake Jimmy Carr’s limelight. ‘I’m writing some one-liners and growing a Hitler fringe to complete the look,’ he said.

• Russell Brand has made an unscheduled appearance on GMTV, during a hidden-camera piece in reporter Michelle Morrison tripped and fell in a North London street, to see whether strangers would come to her aid. And after about 10 people ignored her, white knight Brand gallantly strode. It might have helped that she was blonde and that he found her ‘quite pretty’. After being told it was a stunt, he said the moral of the story was: ‘Don’t help people if you see them in the street, because it’s probably a GMTV setup. If you see perhaps, a little old lady quivering and twitching by an upturned wheelchair- check first that Lorraine Kelly ain’t around the corner with a microphone.’

• ‘If you're called a political comedian, the suggestion is that you're not a proper comedian. Being a political comedian sounds like you're hectoring.’ Jeremy Hardy

SOURCES: Digital Spy, San Francisco Gate/TMZ, Rickygervais.com, YouTube, Metro, Mustard, More magazine, The Sun, thelondonpaper, Sunday Herald, Glasgow

Published: 26 Sep 2008