'No bigger than a catflap'

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

‘It would be an insult to my audience if the show related to the title.’ Paul Foot.

JLS star Oritse Williams has brought Ronnie Corbett’s old Surrey mansion for £1.7million... and has revealed an odd secret about its design. ‘There’s actually a small secret door I’ve had to close off that he used to come through at the side of the garden.’ he said. ‘It looks like a dwarf-sized door.... it’s literally not much bigger than a catflap.’

Jason Manford and his wife Catherine, an actress, have separated. The split happened last year but only made the papers today.

‘It feels like a good time to be a comedy producer. For years we had people running networks who were frightened of comedy, which was expensive and hard to launch, so they’d rather have a cheap reality format that got them 5million.Now they realise that if you get a great comedy, it becomes a branding instrument for your channel,’ Hat Trick Productions’ Jimmy Mulville.

Could this be Jerry Seinfeld’s perfect girl? The portrait is a composite of all the 57 girlfriends his character dated in his sitcom. Photographer Richard Prince came up with the idea of putting them all together and is set to sell a limited number of prints (57, as it happens). ‘ I immediately liked its generic look,’ he wrote on his website. ‘It was unintentionally dreamy. Non-threatning.’

Ben Elton’s new sitcom, The Wright Way, has come in for a lot of flak for its dated comedy set around a council health and safety office. But Glynn Gibson, the real health and safety advisor at Basildon Council has the most stinging criticism yet. Elton shows the fictional ‘Baselricky’ department dealing with road defects... but Mr Gibson has been keen to point out that in real life, Basildon town council did not deal with roads, as they come under Essex County Council’s remit. Well, thanks for shattering illusions about council life.

Tom Stade has an idea why Scotland is producing plenty of stand-ups: ‘Maybe its because Billy Connolly is on his way out’.

Lucy Porter used to be in a Pixies-inspired band Cherry Blossom Clinic, where she played the bass. But she was quickly fired.

Tweets of the week
Frankie Boyle (@frankieboyle): Nostalgia programmes are going to be trickier - "I Remember The 70s" just full of people crying, with a helpline number at the end.
James Martin (@Pundamentalism): There's a party in my pants! Unfortunately it's UKIP.
Derek Morecambe (@derekmorecambe): How does Batman's Mum call him in for his dinner? Fuck off. His Mum was fucking murdered, you insensitive SHIT.