Salmon à la Irn-Bru

WTF: Weekly Triva File

‘Living with a comic is kinda like having a cobra as a pet. We can be fun... up to a point.’ Robin Williams

Bellamy’s People star Rhys Thomas used to be a runner on Shooting Stars – and says the rudest guest he encountered was TV presenter Mike Smith. On meeting him, Green asked ‘What do you do?’ Thomas said: ‘I’m a runner’ to which Smith replied: ‘Well fuck off, then. Run.’

Russell Brand took fiancée Katy Perry to Grammy party thrown by Clive Davis at the weekend. On his way in, he joked: ‘ Sorry, I thought this was a Clive Dunn event. I thought we'd be here talking about Dad's Army, I've been misled.’ And then started singing Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler? - to nervous laughs from the American organisers who didn't have a clue why he was singing about a genocidal dictator…

Classical musical comedian Rainer Hersch is playing a series of gigs in the Caribbean tax haven of the Cayman Islands next week.

Before he came into comedy, Tim Key was featured in the 2002 series Britain's Worst Driver. He told The Sun: ‘I needed some money, so applied to a gameshow where you could win a car. They painted a picture of me as this timid character. They called me Timid Tim. Absolutely true. I won a car, a Ford Ka. Sold it a week later.’

When teetotaller Billy Connolly opened the salmon season on the River Dee this week, he had to break with the tradition of sipping a large dram and pouring the rest into the river. He made do with Irn-Bru instead.

Michael Palin once agreed to be interviewed by a bunch of sixth formers for their school newspaper – during which they asked him increasingly risqué questions until they finally outraged him. ‘I've never been so offended in my life,’ he said. ‘Right, that's it, I'm leaving.’ He then picked up his coat and stormed off – forgetting he was actually in his own house. Cue a sheepish walk back…

Adam Hills was trying out some material a small gig called Local Laughs in Melbourne on Monday, when he released that the passengers on the trams that stop outside the venue could hear the gig. So he started to try to encourage more punters in saying: ‘Come on in and I'll buy you a drink!’ A couple took him up on the challenge – and proved to be funny enough to hold the stage on their own. As Hills, who hosts pop quiz Spicks and Specks in Australia, went to get the beers in, the bloke told the audience: ‘I was on the tram looking in here and I said to my wife, “Hey, that looks like Adam Hills in The Local” and she said, “Nah, he can't be that broke”…’