WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• 'I'd like to go and see my grave. I'd like to see where they bury me and what the bastards say about me. What I want written is, here lies THE Rik Mayall with 'the' underlined.' Rik Mayall in 2010.

• Charlie Chaplin's original Little Tramp outfit has been put on sale for $195,000.It was lent to him by Scottish actor Billie Ritchie, his mentor who originally developed the character before Chaplin made it famous. But the most interesting throwaway line from the description on the website of memorabilia house Moments In Time, which is selling it? 'Ritchie was to die in a filming accident involving an ostrich in 1921'.

• Stewart Lee fan Emma Hampton this week tweeted this picture of her ticket to see his show in November, pointing out: 'I'm still mildly amused that my ticket describes this show as Stewart Lee: A Room With A Stew, plus Comedy.'

• Mike Judge's US sitcom Silicon Valley contained the most scientifically elaborate dick joke every committed to film (Watch). And now he has tweeted a link to what he claimed was a 12-page Stanford research paper breaking down the maths behind the gag, all about the science of jerking off a room full of geeks. The paper, entitled Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency, is credited to two of the show's characters, Dinesh Chugtai and Bertram Gilfoyle, but with the disclaimer 'The authors would like to graciously thank Vinith Misra for doing pretty much everything'. Misra is a real PhD student at Stanford, and here is his valuable work:

• The Onion has launched Clickhole, a parody of clickbait sites like Upworthy and BuzzFeed, kicking off with such gems as 16 Pictures Of Beyoncé Where She's Not Sinking In Quicksand, the video You Won't Believe How Cheap This Stock Video Of A Woman Sitting On A Swing Was and the vacuous quiz Which Hungry Hungry Hippo Are You. As ever, the question is how will you tell the spoof from reality.

• Among all the World Cup songs being released, we have to acknowledge this one by USA Soccer Guy, entitled Kick That Soccer Ball. 'Don't want no felony cards' indeed:

• The comedian who Eddie Murphy told to stop posing as his son is set to lose a defamation lawsuit against the Hollywood star. Brando Murphy was served a 'cease and desist' letter from Eddie after he appeared with Richard Pryor's son on the Sons Of Comedy tour, as well as apparently insinuating to others that he was Eddie's son. But Brando got his retaliation in first with a libel claim against the older Murphy – which a Los Angeles judge, in a preliminary ruling, has rejected.

• Kudos to whoever snuck this into the letters page of Metro: 'Thanks to Michael at the BP garage who gave me a free apple turnover after my car broke down.' It was signed 'Alan, by text'. Presumably he was too modest to add the 'Partridge'.

• This has been around a while, but it resurfaced again this week: Louis CK doing stand-up in the 1980s, almost unrecognisable from the balding grump we know him as today:

• Tweets of the week
Paul Eggleston (@pauleggleston): People say that I contradict myself. Well I'm sorry, but I make absolutely no apologies for that.
James Martin(@pundamentalism): I swallowed the Scrabble tiles Y, S, L, E, F, and M last night, and now I've just shit 'MYSELF'.
Jay Tuvz (@JayTuvz): Do you know the Postcode for Newcastle City Centre? Anyone?

Published: 13 Jun 2014