WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘I don’t really like comedy,’ Reece Shearsmith from the League of Gentlemen.

• Running a competition to find the funniest clean comedian in Britain's all well and good... but could the organisers of Clean Up Your Act not have chosen a more appropriate clip to illustrate their ethos on their website than Dara O Briain's ranting against homeopaths. It's damn fine comedy, but it does contain a fair few f-bombs. The clip has since been replaced with a 'safer' one from Peter Kay.

• After escaping a parking ticket last week because he was ‘too important’, James Corden’s £70,000 convertible Jaguar XK sports car has caused him another embarrassing incident – after he ran out of petrol in a London street. He had to call a mate who rocked up with a gallon of unleaded a few minutes later…

• Rob Brydon played the Hay literary festival this week – in the Barclays Wealth Pavilion. ‘It’s not a pavilion. It’s a tent,’ he sneered. Have you ever heard of someone going camping and saying, “You unload the car, I’ll put up the pavilion”?’

• Simon Pegg this week testified against a man accused of stealing actress Kirsten Dunst’s $2,000 handbag from a hotel room, saying he had lost his digital camera and iPod in the incident at a penthouse suite at the SoHo Grand Hotel in Manhattan in 2007.

• Watch Dad's Army on BBC Two tomorrow afternoon, and you’ll see a rare early acting appearance by co-writer Jimmy Perry. At the time he was still harbouring ambitions to be an actor, so got a cameo part as stand-up comic Charlie Cheeseman. Originally Perry wanted to play Private Walker, but was beaten to the role by James Beck . The black and white episode from 1968 was the sixth in the first series, and air at 5.55pm.

• This is how this clip is explained on YouTube: ‘This guy was heckling an open mic comedy show all night. Eventually the host challenged him, saying, if you think you're funny then get up on stage. Surprisingly, he took the challenge. Unfortunately, he wasn't funny. At all. He was very drunk and probably on cocaine. Later he tried to run up on stage and assault one of the real comedians and had to be forcibly removed from the club.’ An auspicious start:
  

• Shooting Russell Brand’s naked backside proved too much for one cameraman on his new film Get Him To The Greek. The lensman broke the delicate mood on set by saying: ‘Can we stop now, because this is horrible.’

• Alexander Armstrong once got chased down the street by a paparazzi who mistook him for Princess Diana’s former confidant Paul Burrell. The persistent photographer was shooting away, yelling: ‘So what have you go to say about the anniversary of Diana’s death, Paul?’ Armstrong recalls: ‘But this was April, so I said, “She died in August, didn’t she?”. And he was saying, “Oooh, ironic that you of all people can’t remember when she died, eh Paul? Eh, Eh?”’

• Eddie Large says: ‘Before I die, I’d love to go into the Rovers and say, “Can I have a pint and some of Betty's hotpot?” I’d be the happiest man in the world.’

SOURCES: Radio Times, Chortle, The Sun, London Evening Standard, IMDB, YouTube, Digital Spy, Radio Times, TV Times.

Published: 4 Jun 2010