WTF: Michael McIntyre special

• 'On my last tour I was so funny I made a man puke Guinness down his T-shirt,' Alun Cochrane.

• Michael McIntyre launched his memoirs, Life & Laughing (), with a glitzy party last night. Here are a couple of anecdotes from it:

• When a student in Edinburgh, Michael McIntyre tried to impress his flatmates by fetching them some weed from a dealer in Leith. He was petrified as he knocked on the tenement door, when he heard a Scottish voice from behind the peephole shout: ‘It's Hugh Grant, but he's all Chinesey.’ The door opened to reveal a man with a tattoo of the map of Scotland on his face, and he cautiously entered the bare apartment, reeking of drugs and heated only by a toaster with its front ripped off to expose the hot grills. The deal didn’t start well though. ‘How much do you want?,’ the dealer Scott asked. ‘I don't know, whatever is the done thing. Will you take a post-dated cheque?’ McIntyre said in his naivety. ‘Are you fuckin’ jokin’?’ Scott said, freezing McIntyre in terror. ‘I'm not joking. I have a guarantee card,’ he said, hardly making things better. But Scott saw the funny side: ‘I tell you what, you've got balls comin’ in here with your post-dated cheque. Student bastard. That's hilarious. Sit yourself down and have a toke on this.’ The rest of the evening passed in a haze..

• One of Michael McIntyre’s early jobs was as a runner for a TV and advertisement production company; and one day he was sent to drop a package off at the Saatchi & Saatchi ad agency. En route, he heard on the radio that founder Maurice Saatchi was leaving, so when he arrived at the office he wasn’t surprised to see a press scrum outside. McIntyre ran into the office unnoticed, but when he emerged, the journalists descended on him, mistaking him for an employee. When they asked him about the future of the company, rather that admit his real job , McIntyre started parroting opinions he heard on the radio. The press, used to so many ‘no comments’ from execs, swarmed around, recording his every word – even his bold announcement that the agency would be Losing It biggest account, British Airways. ‘What do you do here?’ one reporter yelled at him. ‘Well, nothing now, I’ve just resigned,’ he said, and left.

• The poster for his 2003 Edinburgh show featured the quote: ‘The best new comic in the English speaking world – The Sun’. He now admits it was entirely made-up.

• Kenny Everett was so famous and well-loved he rarely had to pay for a meal out – and even if the restaurant did take his cheque, they were more likely to frame it than cash it. And once, when he broke a shopping trip for lunch at his favourite eaterie, La Sorpresa in Hampstead, he forgot his pen and wrote the cheque using the toothpaste he’d just brought instead.

• Spot the difference (courtesy of one Chortle reader): Roy Chubby Brown vs Kevin Bloody Wilson:
  
  

• Canadian teen heartthrob Justin Bieber is a huge fan of The Inbetweeners – and wants to make an appearance in it. He said: 'I came across 'The Inbetweeners' and man, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. It was so real to what actually goes on at school. So many high school shows try to glamorise school, but this was real and that's what made it so funny. If they are going to make a fourth series or a movie, I would make sure I was free to do a cameo. If they want me, I'm there.'

• Jo Brand said comedienne Beryl Reid was the person who most inspired her, professionally. She said: 'She didn’t care what anyone else thought of her. She would do anything as long as she thought it was funny. So my advice to you is don’t care what anyone thinks of you; do what you want to do and go for it!' The comments come in support of charity Chance UK’s Big Influence campaign, trying to steer children away from antisocial behaviour.

• 'You can't write comedy if you're smoking dope,' Eric Idle.

• Russell Brand says he won't ever appear in a film with Katy Perry because it would be a 'fucking nightmare'. But he did have one suggestion that might work: 'We'll do a sex tape! Give them what they want!'

• Clip of the week, from a shockingly homophobic Eighties comic:
  

• Tweets of the week (ignoring the many, many Chilean miners gags):
  Joel Dommett (@joeldommett): I like the fact that @stephenfry is basically the Myspace Tom for twitter.
  Juliet Meyers (@julietmeyers): Oh shit. my computer uses U.S. English. I wanted to 'save' the document but accidentally blew it up.
  Peter Serafinowicz:(@serafinowicz ): Lif is too short.

SOURCES: Comedy Central, Life & Laughing, YouTube, Daily Mirror, Chance UK, The Scotsman, People Magazine, YouTube, Twitter

Published: 15 Oct 2010