WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• Spotted at the first night of Johnny Vegas’s new play And Another Thing... and the Manchester International Festival this week, Dragons Duncan Ballantyne and Deborah Meaden. Wonder if they’ll invest...

• Michael McIntrye has been named Britain’s favourite dinner guest (presumably hypothetically) in a survey by an ice cream firm. You see, this is the sort of thing that passes for news when you’re not allowed to hack phones...

• ‘We must broaden out and reach those who feel we don’t appeal to them,’ said Radio 4 controller Gwyneth Williams this week. But not too much widening of the tone of the station in the new comedy programmes she announced, fronted by such R4-friendly voices as Rory Bremner, Sue Perkins and John Finnemore. Well, at least Bremner didn’t go to Cambridge...

• Thanks to Chortle reader Adam Millard who sent us this clip, after seeing the sketch group concerned, Schooner, on an old episode of 3-2-1. Wrong on so many levels:
  

• Arj Barker makes minimum demands on his audiences. 'You don't even have to completely face the stage,' he says. 'Even if you've got a neck problem and have to sit at a 15-degree angle away, then that's OK.'

• James Corden has taken up pilates.

• Mark Thomas has braved the Israeli Army to walk the length of the West Bank separation wall... but a show next week has kiboshed by a force much closer to home. He has cancelled a show in Hartlepool – saying he has to look after his children while his wife is away on holiday. ‘My wife is going on a swimming holiday, cold water swimming in Slovenia, and I am looking after the kids. She booked it ages ago and I messed up dates.’

• Scourge of the News Of The World, Steve Coogan has bought a £2.45 million manor house in Ovingdean, East Sussex. And he’s made immediate efforts to get in with his neighbours,inviting the local am-dram group round to his house.

• Tweets of the week
  Ivor Dembina: (@ivordembina) My sympathy for the NOTW employees. A mate, with them for years has, through no fault of his own, lost a well paid job. He's a policeman.
  Sean Kent (@seankent): If your wife is criticizing you, tweak her nipples. She's already mad anyway.
  GlennyRodge (@GlennyRodge): bumpier (noun): a structure sticking out of your bottom.

SOURCES: Chortle, Daily Mirror, Chortle, YouTube, Manawatu Standard, Twitter, Peterlee Mail, Mail On Sunday, Twitter

Published: 15 Jul 2011