The Weekly Trivia File

• Russell Brand has recruited spiritual guru Radhanath Swami,to help him find enlightenment. ‘He's got the answer,’ Brand said. ‘I'm a spiritual gent and increasingly that's the level I want to vibrate on, were it not for my crazed lust for sex and glamour.’ But if that doesn’t work, he’s got another plan – inspired by the hot tub he’s just bought himself. ‘It's self cleansing, unlike my soul. I've started drinking chlorine in the vain hope that one day I'll reach enlightenment.’

• Meanwhile, Brand’s plans to date Eugenie and become part of the Royal family have hit a small hitch. Yesterday, her mum, the Duchess of York joked: ‘Tell him he will have to come through me first.’

• A heckler was thrown out of a Jimmy Carr gig in Margate, Kent, after stripping down to a nappy made of toilet paper and shouting: ‘You’re boring me.’

• David Walliams is learning how to breathe fire.

• Joe Pasquale has spent a week in a Costa Rican jail. It was in aid of TV documentary that will be screened on Virgin 1 next month. He said: ‘It was a terrible open prison for 700 prisoners – 600 of them carrying knives. It was dog eat dog. People were being stabbed all the time. One bloke was stabbed right behind my back.’

• Stephen Merchant watched his first basketball match this week, The LA Lakers vs the Toronto Raptors.

• Earlier this week we featured a terrible stand-up set by Mark Hayden. But he wasn’t the only one to lose the audience that night. Here is the compere, and promoter, Dave Bishop, being a lot less funny than a bloke in the audience. (Bishop added the captions after being featured here...)

• Dave Spikey was also outwitted by a heckler at the Manchester Comedy Store this week, as he bemoaned declining standards of education. ‘Kids are getting stupider…’ he was complaining, when a lone voice piped up: ‘It’s “more stupid”.’

SOURCES: Imdb.com/The Sun, Nafferton Today, Metro, The Mirror, Bournemouth Echo, NBA.com, YouTube, Chortle

Published: 24 Oct 2008