WTF: Weekly Triva File

• Marcus Brigstocke: 'I worked on an oil rig in the North Sea. When I had time off I was a podium dancer. I combined a life on the rigs with some dancing, I was a very good dancer – I was very passionate about it. I used to go clubbing every single weekend and I got talent spotted.'

• Did he let the Cat out of the bag? Fans of Red Dwarf will delighted to learn that Stuart Snaith, head of DVD firm 2 Entertain, announced this week that the show had been ‘recommissioned as a series next year’. But when Chortle followed up his comments at the Broadcast TV Comedy Forum, he backtracked. ‘Apologies,’ he said later. ‘There is no confirmed new series of Red Dwarf, just some talk of the possibility.’ Which given that the comeback show Back To Earth attracted a TV audience of nearly 3 million is no surprise – though whether it comes off clearly remains to be seen. If it does, you read it here first…

• Billy Connolly gave £10 to homeless James Crawford outside Sainsbury's in Edinburgh city centre this week.

• Frasier star Jane Leeves, aka Daphne, got her first movie role in Monty Pythons' The Meaning of Life in 1983. She was an uncredited dancer in the musical number, Christmas in Heaven. See if you can spot her:
  

• Rhod Gilbert has suggested he might help struggling venue Theatr Hafren in Newtown, Powys, by donating some of the proceeds of his show there to the cause – news the local paper have described, oxymoronically, as a 'kind-hearted bombshell'.

• Andy Dick missed his performance at the Vancouver Comedy Festival on Wednesday, after being denied entry into Canada. Authorities refused to allow the 43-year-old comic into the country because the ankle bracelet he wears as part of his punishment for pleading guilty to drug possession and battery in October prohibits him from leaving the US.

• You Tube clip of the week:
  

• Dara O’Briain - who has a degree in mathematical physics – dropped in to Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory last week to mark the Physics at Work scheme, showing schoolchildren the range of jobs science has to offer. Part of his role was to give out an award to the company that pupils had voted the best exhibitor... which, worryingly, went to the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

• Simon Pegg was in court yesterday, testifying against a man accused of stealing his iPod and camera from a suite at New York's SoHo Grand hotel, where he was filming scenes from How To Lose Friends And Alienate People in August 2007. Co-star Kirsten Dunst had a $2,000 handbag, containing another $2,000 in cash stolen. Jarrod Beinerman, 34, has already been sentenced to four and a half years over the incident, while his alleged accomplice, James Jimenez, now faces up to 15 years behind bars if convicted in the ongoing trial.

• Game-makers RockStar have released new video of Omid Djalili's character Yusif Amir in the latest Grand Theft Auto spin-off The Ballad of Gay Tony. Here it is:
  

SOURCES: thisissurrey, Chortle, The Sun, Los Angeles Times, County Times, Perez Hilton, YouTube, University of Cambridge, IMDB, RockStar

Published: 25 Sep 2009