WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘I don't think of myself as funny.’ Ben Stiller.

• Johnny Depp shoves a midget down a toilet in Ricky Gervais' new TV series Life’s Too Short.

• ‘Every year, they say, "Drive safe”,’ Jay Leno told motorbike riders at the annual Love Ride in Glendale, California, this week, where he was acting as grand marshall. ‘I'm gonna say, "Don't drive safe.” I want to see somebody go down. So it'll be fun. I want it to be in front or behind me and see a whole row of bikes go down. Get drunk, fall off the road. We've all become too damn polite... We haven't had one incident.’ Not long after, Romarino Zeri, 51, and his 39-year-old passenger Julie Cameron died in the first fatal accident the event has had in its 28-year history.

• Paul Merton has dragged up in gold lamé ballgown, long blonde wig and shocking eyeliner for a parade in Ibiza. The outfit (pictured) was for an episode of Paul Merton's Adventures for Channel 5 – in which he also dressed as a chicken.

• James Buckley has become a father for the first time, aged 24. The Inbetweeners star's fiancee Clair Meek gave birth to a baby boy in Kilmarnock on Wednesday.

• Johnny Vegas’s autobiography might be on hold – but here’s a bit of his personal history: his first TV appearance. He appeared under his real name, Michael, as a ‘civilian’ contestant on the game show Win, Lose Or Draw in 1996 on a team with celebrities Windsor Davies and Kriss Akabusi. Watch it here.

• A Los Angeles charity auctioning off a ‘meet and greet’ with Russell Brand at a swanky lunch in the Beverly Hills Hilton tomorrow has estimated the value of the experience to be worth $10,000 and opened the bidding at $750. Nearly 24 hours in, and the number of bids on CharityBuzz.com stands at... zero.

• Paul Foot was on Never Mind The Buzzcocks this week – but he doesn’t always go down quite so well:
  

• After Doug Stanhope played Iceland’s Litla-Hraun prison, inmates wanted to send him a thank-you T-shirt with the slogan: ‘I went to prison in Iceland and all they gave me was this lousy t-shirt which they gagged me with while fucking me in the ass.’ It was deemed ‘inappropriate’.

• Eddie Izzard got so attached to the crutch he used as Long John Silver in the new Sky 1 version of Treasure Island that he took it home after the shoot. He said: ‘I grew to love the crutch. It looks great.’

• Sarah Silverman has inadvertently ripped off Stewart Lee. This week she tweeted: ‘Ang Lee is not just a great filmmaker but, when said altogether, also a racist way to say "angry".’ - echoing Lee’s own routine on the filmmaker. But why say it in 140 characters when you could say it over six-and-a-half minutes:
  

• Heard it! Former US presidential candidate had a crack at telling a joke this week, tweeting about the poor showing of Congress in opinion polls: ‘Congressional Approval at All-Time Low of 9% – We're down to paid staffers and blood relatives.’ NY Magazine thought they’d heard it before... and found out he’s done the same gag 27 times in the past five years, since back when the approval rating was 23 per cent.

• Tweets of the wee
  Almajir (@almajir ): Comic Sans walks into a bar. The Barman says "we don't serve your type in here"
  Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt):You will never wear a suit as well as an old black guy in 2011 or a German lesbian in 1929.
  Ross Brierley (@RossBrierley ):What do we want? A greater sense of urgency! When do we want it? Oh, whenever really. Theres no rush

SOURCES: Hollywood Reporter, London Evening Standard, LA Times, YouTube, Starbuzz, Youtube, DougStanhope.com, The Sun, Twitter, NY Mag, Twitter

Published: 28 Oct 2011