WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• 'We don't say it's a good joke but he shouldn't have been convicted over a bad one.' John Cooper QC, the barrister representing Twitter joke trial defendant Paul Chambers.

• Tim Vine’s not-so-secret past as a would-be punk has resurfaced this week. He and brother Jeremy, the Radio 2 presenter, formed a band called The Flared Generation when they were youngsters in that punk heartland of Cheam, Surrey. Smash Hits magazine described them as: ‘The most unfashionable punk band in the country’. Both Vines have spoken about it before, though, with Jeremy calling it ‘a catastrophic musical enterprise’ and Tim explaining: ‘We wore enormous flared trousers – trying to bring it back into fashion in the 80s when everyone else was wearing drainpipes.’

• Chris Dangerfield’s Edinburgh show is sponsored by an escort agency – which is offering 10 per cent discount to anyone who shows them his flyer. The show, Sex Tourist, is about a seven-week trip to Thailand where heI overdosed on Viagra, shot a 9mm Browning at some naked children, lost an ounce of methamphetamine in his anal canal, bodged a home enema, fell in love, and cried. Perfect training for the Fringe, then.

• Talking of the Fringe, Dan Willis is going to perform six, hour-long shows every day of the festival, performing a new show as well as every other one he’s previously done. He starts with Control Alt Delete at 1.45pm, and ends at 10.30pm, having compered a show called Jocks and Geordies. Willis said of his run of shows, all at the Laughing Horse Free Festival and with as little as 15 minutes between them: ‘I get bored when I’m not on stage, and I’m sick of people saying the hours are easy...’

• Meanwhile musical improvisers Nothing To Show will be flyering the Royal Mile every day in their underpants ‘which in Scotland, at any time of year should surely be commended’, they say.

• Zach Galifianakis is to marry his girlfriend Quinn Lundberg in August – and sent out invitations featuring a line drawing of themselves which he sketched himself. ‘He made sure he looked like a little troll, while Quinn is a stunning tall blonde princess,' one guest said.

• Writer Mark Kelly, who used to perform on the comedy circuit as Mr Nasty, remembers one of the strangest gigs he ever played. Speaking to blogger John Fleming, he said: ‘I remember turning up at a another gig at another student venue where they were really, really proud of their brand new sound system. They showed me the speakers – Yes, they look really new and good – and they showed me the microphone – Yes, that looks really good…. But there was nothing in between. I said, “Where’s the amp?”, and they just looked at me. “Oh,” they asked, “Do we need something else?”’ So he had to play the sizeable room unamplified.

• Comic Dominic Frisby has written a short graphic novel based on vampires in comedy, illustrated by Michael Lee-Grahame. Here it is....
  

• Spotted at comedy mindreader Chris Cox’s show at the Udderbelly on London’s South Bank last week was Jonathan Ross. Well, we say spotted like he was discreet, but he got to take part, too. There’s one section in which Cox performs the tasks people are thinking of – and Ross was thinking he'd like the illusionist to sit on his shoulders like a baby. So he did, and Ross paraded him around the purple upside-down cow of a venue like the proud dad he is… Ross later tweeted to Cox: ‘Happy to be the wind beneath your wings. Temporarily. Great show! We loved it.’

• Ricky Gervais has donated £1,000 to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital after daring Gary Lineker he wouldn’t use a terrible cliche during the BBC’s coverage of the Euro 2012 clash between Czech Republic and Portugal. Gervais messaged the Match Of The Day presenter: ‘Gary Lineker: I am watching you on my TV. I dare you to use the phrase “it was a game of two halves”. I would enjoy that.’ Lineker replied: ‘I will suffer the abuse that will follow my uttering of the cliche, just because it’s you.’ And indeed he did.

• Meanwhile in a leap of imagination, Mail Online suggested Gervais was so controversial he needed armed bodyguards. He was pictured with a couple of gun-carrying policeman alongside copy that read ‘It wouldn't be the most unusual situation to see Ricky Gervais employ bodyguards to help protect him from those who take offense at his jokes...’ But, Mail writers, that’s the American spelling of ‘offense’ - coming over here and taking our nouns’ jobs...

• Why would you put your second open mic set on YouTube? Especially when it’s this:
  

• Tweets of the week
  Nadia Kamil ‏(@NadiaKamil): An alternative title for the Bible is The Great Begatsby.
  Cluedont ‏(@cluedont): No prizes for guessing who the winner of June's prizeless Guess the Winner Competition was.
  Ed Byrne (@MrEdByrne): Today I'm going to see if I can go the whole day without ending a sentence with a preposition. Let's see how I get on. #grammarjoke

• Incidentally, that last tweet marks Byrne’s return to Twitter – more than a year after his well-publicised spat with joke thief Keith Chegwin drove him off the microblogging site. Welcome back, Ed...

  Published: 29 Jun 2012