WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘They can’t ignore me for much longer. I should have a knighthood. Otherwise the people will revolt.’ Russell Brand.

• Russell Kane says he’s ‘desperately trying to be single’ until Christmas. But he fears that doing the Fringe might thwart that plan, saying: ‘God knows what will happen in Edinburgh.’ For the record he likes dark-haired girls between 22 and 30 and ‘basically, a slapper who is kind at heart’. Plus he adds: ‘Scots ladies aren’t as easy to pull as English ladies. You have to work a bit harder but they make it worthwhile... I’ll just have to focus on the festival-goers.’

• Another of the comedy Russells, Canadian star Russell Peters, is divorcing his wife Monica Diaz after two years. The pair have an 18-month-old daughter, but Peters says: ‘It was actually a decent breakup. There were no hard feelings.’

• Robin Ince has received complaints from that the title of his Radio 4 science show Infinite Monkey Cage somehow condones inhume treatment of animals. His rejoinder – as he often mentions in his stand-up – is that the most prominent feature of infinite monkey cages is that they are 'roomy'. But that's not quite right, as one avid listener has pointed out in a blog that has come up with some hypothetical infinite monkey cages that do not fit that descriptions. You see, that's what happens when you make a show that appeals to geeks...

• Alistair McGowan says Sarah Millican is one of the few female voices he can do ‘because she sounds like a man doing a woman’s voice’.

• Strange what you can find in the pound shop... At Chortle's local branch we picked up an Alan Davies stand-up DVD called Lafter Hours for a quid – but it wasn't quite what it seemed. Despite a relatively recent picture on the front, this was a 40-minute set recorded in the early Nineties, when Davies was a very new comedian, at London's T&C2 club (which has been called The Garage for years). It's a thing of some interest – if not actually any good. Even Davies himself has given the disc a one-star review on Amazon. When it was released in 2008, he wrote: 'I keep trying to warn people off this sub-standard product which has nothing to do with me. I had no idea it was being marketed prior to its appearance on Amazon and have since asked the producers of this DVD for contractual proof that they have the rights to market this product. They have produced no evidence but are going ahead regardless. I won't benefit in any way from sales of this DVD and would like to warn people off buying it as the recording is poor and the gig itself, which happened back in 1991, was awful and not worth paying to see. Apologies to anyone who is disappointed by this product but there is nothing I can do.'

• The working title of BBC Three’s new prison-set sitcom Dead Boss was My So-Called Life Sentence... but writers Holly Walsh and Sharon Horgan had to change it because the on-screen programme guide would have truncated it as My So-Called Life... and confused viewers hoping for the mid-Nineties teen drama.

• James Corden is reportedly set to star as tenor Paul Potts in a film about the 2007 Britain’s Got Talent winner’s life called One Chance.

• American comedian Kathleen Madigan has been told she couldn’t take part in a pro-am golf competition because they had a ‘no women’ rule. She had been invited by a businessman to take part in a tournament – but was then rejected by the TV network hosting it ‘because we don't have any women playing in this tournament’. ‘I was shocked,’ she said, ‘I was like, “Wow, you're dumb enough to put that in writing?”’ She declined to name the network or the tournament, but she has previously joked on her blog: ‘What exactly is the perk of no women? Are strippers being brought in? Hookers?’

• Tweets of the week:
  Liam Mullone @mullone): Comedy's like sex. People would rather see young people doing it badly than older people doing it well.
  Rob Hale (@RobKH): The real tragedy of football is that they would score far more goals if both teams put their differences aside and worked together.
  Graham Linehan @glinner): There's no 'me' in 'Prometheus'. Oh, wait, there is. There's no 'us' in 'Prometheus'. Oh, for FUCK'S SAKE.

Published: 15 Jun 2012