WTF: Weekly Triva File

• Mat Horne’s New Year’s resolution is to eat fewer bananas because ‘the potassium in them just makes me incredibly horny...’

• Bill Bailey has revealed that he almost drowned at the age of 16, when he had an asthma attack while swimming across a lake during a school trip to Austria. ‘I suddenly felt that familiar feeling of tightness in my chest and realised with horror that I wasn’t able to catch enough breath,' he recalled. 'It's terrifying when it happens because you feel you can't get enough breath in, nor expel enough to shout for help, so I started to flounder around and then I went under. I swallowed water and started to panic, but thankfully a few of my friends noticed I was n trouble and swam over to help me to shore.’

• Still, things have turned out all right for Bill now – as Countdown's Rachel Riley has something of a crush on him. The 23-year-old said: ‘I keep asking if they can get Bill Bailey on the show. I absolutely love him!’

• Comedy pays #1: Michael McIntyre has just brought himself a JaguarXK convertible ... for £80,000.

• As the old Jongleurs venues change their name to Highlight, Chortle receives the following error-riddled email from their Camden sales manager that managed to spell not only their old name, but also their new name, wrong. Not a good start. It read: ‘To whom in [sic] may concern. You may or may not know that Jongluers [sic] sites under the name of intertain uk will be changing names to Famous for Comedy @ higlight [sic] in the New Year. I have been through google [what, all of it?] and your sites [?] were prominate [sic] in the promotion of our venue, I thankyou [sic] for this but could you please make arrangements to change out [sic] listings.’

• Confessions of a joke thief:
  

• Bored of Russell Brand and Katy Perry? Well, they’re not the only loved-up couple in comedy. Adam Hills married his long-term girlfriend, opera singer and cabaret star Ali McGregor, in Australia over the new year; while in icy Britain Russell Kane will tomorrow tie the knot with Sadie Hasler in Southend – with their reception at the local pub.

• Comedy pays #2: David Walliams has bought a £1.8million home in Hove, already been dubbed the ‘seaside shagpad’ by the tabloids.

• Comic Phil Butler says he saw a UFO when he was a chid. On his Green Room podcast, featured on Chortle, he said: ‘I saw a UFO when I was 19. I had a close encounter with a UFO. This is serious. It’s absolutely true. I had a proper close encounter with a UFO, and that makes you think, “Hang on, how does all that tie into Christianity and all that sort of stuff?”.’

• American stand-up pioneer Jean Carroll, who died over the new year, performed at an emotional Jewish benefit night in May 1948 – the month Israel had been declared a state. After a night of impassioned speeches and stirring traditional music, most the audience were reduced to tears – hardly the ideal circumstances for a comedian to take to the stage. But unfazed, she leaned into the microphone and said: ‘I’ve always been proud of the Jews, but never so proud as tonight. Tonight I wish I had my old nose back.’

• Rupert Everett is no fan of comedy improv. During the filming of Stardust, Adam Buxton and David Walliams improvised some lines at the behest of the director, when Everett chipped in with: ‘That’s supposed to be funny is it?’ Buxton, calling Everett the rudest celebrity he’s ever met, says it was ‘quite demoralising and embarrassing’.

• Heckled by a bread roll:
  

• Mark Watson’s brother Paul is the world’s youngest international football coach – at 25. He is in charge of the Pohnpei national team, a tiny island in Micronesia

SOURCES: The Mirror, Mail on Sunday, The Sun, Daily Mail, Chortle, YouTube, Chortle/Southend Echo, The Sun, The Green Room podcast, New York Times, Metro, YouTube, bcfc.co.uk

Published: 8 Jan 2010