WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘There's a line of talentless idiots ready to go on telly at the drop of the hat now.’ Chris Ramsay

• Ross Noble has a tank – or more accurately an Abbott 433 self-propelled gun – which he brought from a website called Tanks A Lot. 'What's amazing is that you don't have to pay the Congestion Charge,' he told Richard Herring on his Leicester Square Theatre podcast released this week. 'There are no rules about it,' he added. 'The guns are deactivated now, but if they worked, from where I live now, I could hit Gatwick. That's not a threat. That REALLY isn't a threat. But I tell you what, the badger cull in our village is going well. I got the fucking lot...'

• The 'Andy Kaufman is alive' story has got especially tedious now his brother, Michael – the man who started the new flurry of rumours after introducing the comic's 'daughter' on stage this week – has started claiming *he* was a victim of a hoax. After the woman was revealed to be actress Alexandra Tartasky, Michael went on CNN to protest: 'I believe that I am part of the hoax. I don’t believe that she’s acting on her own though. That’s all I know. I never allowed myself to get too excited, but I was always slightly sceptical.' Right. Meanwhile, we repeat in full a statement issued by the Los Angeles coroner’s office in the wake of the stunt: 'Andy Kaufman is dead.'

• The stunt raised loads of publicity for the Andy Kaufman Awards... but not for the poor sap who won it. Not a single mention in any of the converge of the comedian who actually won the award. It was Harry Terjanian:

• Lucy Porter once wanted to be hard-hitting journalist, applying to Granada Television because she wanted to work on World In Action. Instead, she ended up working for Richard and Judy. 'I have reconciled myself to the fact that I am not an intellectual giant,' she sighs.

• Still Game star Ford Kiernan has bought a new £600,000 four-bedroom flat – within walking distance of Glasgow’s new Hydro venue, where he just happens to reviving his sitcom for 16 dates next autumn.

• People must REALLY want to see John Cleese get roasted. A charity dinner later this month in which his friends line up to mock him has sold out – even with tickets at £225 a pop. A welcome boost for the NSPCC's coffers, though.

• In his youth, Larry David was a chauffeur for an elderly woman in New York City. The woman asked him to wear a uniform and he hated it, so never did. But because she was half-blind, David just assured her that he did.

•

• Comedy TV station Dave was nearly called Steve, after channel boss Steve North. After he suggested the name Dave, his boss David Abraham was said to be uncomfortable having a station named after himself, so suggested Steve instead. But market research came out in favour of Dave. 'You can imagine what the board felt when they thought I was trying to rebrand the main channel after myself,' Abraham told MediaGuardian.

• If you know someone who likes Mrs Brown's Boys AND those oh-so hilarious Keep Calm And... posters – well, you should probably re-evaluate your friendships. Or buy them this coaster. RRP £4.99 but down to just 89p on Amazon. Perhaps they're not selling...

• Nicholas Parsons used to be a stand-up.. but it didn't always go well. Speaking to blogger John Fleming this week, fellow comic Brian Damage remembers being on the same bill as him in a tough Irish pub called The Wellington in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, run by a guy called Butty Sugrue 'an Irish circus strongman who used to pull buses with his teeth'. Damage recalls of Parsons: 'He had this tennis court sized room full of Irishmen and he’d tell a joke, then say: "Right, that didn’t go down very well. But, of course, being Irish, it probably went over your heads" - Fuck me, how they booed him!'

• The Radio Times wrongly billed Graeme Garden as Graham Green when listing the return of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue for its 60th – 60th! – series.

• Tweets of the week
Twop Twips ‏via Brian Biilston(@brian_bilston): IF YOU hold a large mushroom up to your ear you can hear the sound of the Portobello Market
Sixth Form Poet(@sixthformpoet): The really impressive thing about the world's oldest person is that they started off as the world's youngest person.
Sanjeev Kohli @govindajeggy): I saw this documentary about a depressed whale. It was having a human of a time

Published: 15 Nov 2013