WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘I’ve never been led by money.’ Peter Kay

• Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s ‘Sachsgate’ phone calls are being taught in schools. Some parents at Hampstead School, in Camden, North London, have complained it’s inappropriate for 14-year-olds to be studying the incident for their English language courses, as it includes Ross leaving the message ‘He fucked your granddaughter’ on  Andrew Sachs’ answerphone. But headteacher Jacques Szemalikowski said it was no more vulgar than Shakespeare, adding: ‘I think it is a totally appropriate thing to be doing. We are in the real world and children live in the real world. The unit is all about how people react to language and the limits of freedom of expression.’

• Robert Webb has revealed that he once auditioned for Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker’s sitcom Nathan Barley. ‘I'm a huge, huge fan of Chris Morris,’ he said. ‘I think he's a genius, and it is not a word I use very often. I think he's fantastic. I did do an audition/improvisation for Nathan Barley with him once, and that was a thrill in itself - I didn't get anything, but it was a pleasure to sit in a room with him. I think he's great.’

• Accident or design? Here’s Reginald D Hunter making a ‘slip’ on BBC Two’s morning cookery show Something for the Weekend. But you have to admire the composure of presenter Louise Redknapp and chef SImon Rimmer in ploughing on regardless:
  

• As South Park is renewed until 2016, a reminder of Richard Dawkins’ reaction to his ‘appearance’ on the programme: ‘I'm buggered if I like being portrayed as a cartoon character buggering a bald transvestite’.

• A posting on the Broadway World website seems to have mixed up its listings – producing a hybrid show that’s surely a must-see for all the family this Christmas. It wrote: ‘The Rose Theatre Kingdom will present an adaptation of the popular fairy tale, The Snow Queen Fri 2 Dec 2011 - Sun 8 Jan 2012 at Comedy Store in Kingston with morning, matinee & evening performances. The Snow Queen features MC Ian Moore, Roger Monkhouse, Hal Cruttenden, Carl Donnelly, and Phil Nichol.’

• A friend told Sarah Millican: 'Your career's gone catastrophic this year’. Turns out the pal did mean ‘stratospheric’, but the comic ‘just had to check’.

• Did Russell Brand steal Tim Minchin’s look? The musical comedian suggests he might have: ‘All I know is that Russell came to see me at the Soho Theatre in 2006. I went back to Australia and when I came back he was huge and looked like me.’

• Every comedy star serves their time on the circuit, and Jimmy Carr recalls a particularly grim night playing the Frog and Bucket in Manchester for £50 – plus accommodation. But the digs were hardly glamorous: ‘They put us up in a B&B next door, above quite a rough pub, and it transpired about halfway through the night from the nocturnal noises next door, that it was also some form of whorehouse. I spent the night listening to terrifying noises through paper-thin walls.’

• It’s not just comedians who have to suffer inconsiderate arseholes talking through their sets:
  

• According to a new Who’s Who of the Carry On films, Penelope Keith played a nurse in Carry On Doctor long before finding fame in The Good Life  – but her scenes were cut. The same fate befell David Essex who played a heckler in Carry On Henry, when he was 22.

• London-based American comedian Lewis Schaffer is the sort of man who berates folk for giving money to the homeless. No long ago he saw a ‘drunkish, posh twat – an arty-type older man of around 60 – with fancy, hip black-framed glasses’ giving a homeless man money in Soho and had to take issue. ‘I had a flashback to New York, when people used to give money to the homeless and it caused them to proliferate,’ he said. ‘I started screaming at him that he should give me money, instead, as I was six months behind in my mortgage payments and that I needed the money more than that other bum. So he offered me money (which I refused with a smile cause I didn’t expect that). He told me he was going to New York the next day and I suggested he come into my show, which was about to start, and watch. He said he was pressed for time but came in. He left halfway through and put a £20 note in my jar. Yesterday, I saw the dude’s picture in the Financial Times Magazine. Bill Nighy was his name. I didn’t know who he was and I still don’t. I’m gonna Wikipedia him now. But he struck me as a decent guy because he was willing to give me money.’

• Alan Carr asked fans to come up with the name for his last tour – but admitted most the suggestions he received were ‘basically homophobic’. He said: ‘Bent On Success turned to Bender. Smiley Virus - that wasn't very nice. [There was] Dental Breakdown but that was going to hurt my teeth.I thought Spexy Beast was probably best. I am sexy, I wear specs and I'm a beast.’

• Tweets of the week
  Orla McHugh (@Orlabobs): Hitler wasn't such a bad man, after all, he did kill Hitler!
  David Jackson (@Author_Dave): How many authors does it take to change a fragile globe of incandescence throwing its probing rays into the inky unfathomable blackness?
  jacques_aih (@ jacques_aih ): You know half of Gary Barlow's band? That.

SOURCES: Sunday Express, Daily Mail, Digital Spy, YouTube, richarddawkins.net, BroadwayWorld,  The Observer, The Independent, The Independent, YouTube, Carry On Actors by Andrew Ross, blog.thejohnfleming.com, Radio One Newsbeat, Twitter

Published: 18 Nov 2011