WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘Normally comedy writers are socially dysfunctional.’ Channel 4 head of comedy Shane Allen

• Russell Brand admits: ‘I was once thrown off an airplane in Barcelona while carrying heroin in my rectum. There’s no point putting it in your washbag. It's the best place. I was fortunate really, because I was just kicking up a fuss and that was why I got thrown off.’

• Omid Djalili Tweets: 'Only bright side of World Cup for me is making some extra cash as a lookalike for the Mexican goalkeeper.'
  

• Ricky Gervais has revealed that his new Sky One show, in which he sends sidekick Karl Pilkington to visit the new seven wonders of the world will be called An Idiot Abroad. 'Karl is not happy,' he said. 'Perfect. I actually reveal [the title] to him in show seven. It's hilarious. All the way round the world up to then he thinks it's called Karl Pilkington's Seven Wonders.'

• Steve Martin has 'leaked' his rider for his band Steep Canyon Riders on to the internet. The document makes such backstage demands as a tiny Icelandic horse, 'instruments to be tuned by a wiry, sarcastic guy named Shorty, Lou or Lightnin' and 'no unpleasant toxic industrial or chemical smells… unless emanating from the artists'. Click here to read it all.

• If this was you, would you really put it out on the internet?
  

• Tommy Tiernan said that he embarked on his mammoth 36hr stand-up show last year as a way to revive his comedy mojo - but it didn't work. Instead, he found that switching from theatres to more intimate spaces has reinvigorated him. 'One of the hopes in doing that marathon was that I would find a new way of being creative in my stand-up, he said. 'It didn't happen. I just got stuck in a rut. I had been frustrated playing bigger theatres and with the effect it was having on my style. Smaller rooms allow for more creativity. That's where stand-up belongs.'

• Frank Skinner once had a job in the West Midlands that involved smashing up unused furniture with a sledgehammer and burning it in a furnace. He said: 'I enjoyed it so much (it appealed to the vandal in me) that I overfilled the furnace, making it get so hot the actual furnace caught fire. The fire brigade had to put it out. That was in 1982 and apparently people still talk about it.'

SOURCES: Chortle, Now Magazine, Twitter, RickyGervais.com, SteveMartin.com, YouTube (thanks to Paddy Rogers), Montreal Gazette, Sunday Mirror

Published: 2 Jul 2010