WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘If you stay in the game long enough people have to stop saying “you’re shit” and instead say, “She’s definitely doing something whether I like it or not”.’ Josie Long.

• Forget angering the Daily Mail... Russell Brand has made a new enemy: the mayor of Weston-super-Mare. David Hitchins is upset that the comic accused his town of being a haven for drug users on Twitter. Plugging next week’s gig in the Somerset resort, Brand said: ‘Let me take you to junky town’. The town had a reputation as a ‘dumping ground’ for addicts, but Hitchins claims things have changed.

• Gotta love PR spin. August 2011, we get the press release: ‘Lee Hurst is set to tour the UK in his first solo show in 10 years this autumn.’ August 2012: ‘Lee Hurst... first PROPER UK tour in 10 years.’

• Talking of Hurst, he takes credit for giving Chris Moyles’s sidekick, Dave Vitty, the nickname ‘Comedy’ Dave. Even though he was taking the piss, it still stuck.

• Here’s a very young-looking Graham Linehan appearing on Stewart Lee and Richard Herring’s Nineties TV show Fist Of Fun. And look carefully in this exclusive outtake, and you can see Katy Brand in the audience too. This is from the second series of the cult show, which is out on DVD via Go Faster Stripe from October:
  

• Eric Lampaert got naked at a gig last weekend, to perform a lap-dance for a dying man, with just a shocking pink wig to hide his modesty. He was MCing the show at Just The Tonic in Nottingham when he found there was a stag in the audience, Paul, who was in a pink wig,  beer-shaped glasses... and a wheelchair fitted with oxygen tank. During the interval his best man (or woman, as it happens) said: ‘[Paul] wants you to know that he has terminal cancer, so take the piss out of him as much as you like… he’s up for anything. He just wants to have a good night.’ However – as he describes in his blog– Lampaert was uncomfortable with the idea. ‘The comedian in me is thinking, “I can’t make fun of him”,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s agreed; the rest of the audience don’t know of this agreement. They’ll just think I’m a nasty comedian, it’ll make everyone tense … And if I’m honest, I didn’t know how to be clever and funny about a wheelchair-bound man with terminal cancer.  The human being in me however is thinking, “If I don’t make fun of him, is that me ignoring him? He’s a human being after all. To not mention him at all is to hide him under the metaphorical carpet.” So at the end of the show, he decided to go for it: he explained the situation – causing the inevitable tension. Lampaert explained that he had the green light to make fun of Paul – but said he wouldn’t do that, but would do the lap dance instead.  Which is exactly what he did, exposing his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pants – and then more – as he danced to Beyonce’s All The Single Ladies.  He said: ‘All I remember is I got naked, poured beer down my arm for him to lick and I used Paul’s pink wig to hide my now very small penis (It was cold, yeah!) As I do all this and think about how much I hate myself, I see the smile on Paul’s face. Despite facing death, Paul was full of life, and I hope I could be like that if faced with the same situation.’

• Tweets of the week
  Jacques_aih (@Jacques_aih): Someone should warn Geri Halliwell that Russell Brand is still on the Sachs Offenders Register.
  Ian Power (@IHPower): I went to a fancy dress shop for a Dracula outfit. They handed me a Man Utd kit. I said, "You've misheard me, I want to look like a Count."
  Matt Kirshen (@mattkirshen): The last time someone accused me of being socially inept, I shat in their oven. Actually, that could have happened the other way round.

Published: 31 Aug 2012