WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘We don’t apologise for a joke. We are comics. We are here to make you laugh. If you don’t get it, don’t watch us.’ Joan Rivers.

• A sign at Hackney Wick Underground station in London today carries on its information board the message: ‘As a tribute to the late Joan Rivers, parts of this station will gradually be replaced over the next 40 years.’

• Rivers got an early career break because of a slip of the tongue from legendary chat show host Ed Sullivan. At the end of one of his live shows in May 1966, he meant to say: ‘Next week we’ll have Johnny Rivers’ – another comic – but it came out as ‘Joannie’ instead. Rather than admit a mistake, producers booked Joan, and she was a hit.

• When she was working small New York clubs by night, the ambitious Rivers worked as a secretary for nightclub booker Irvin Arthur by day. Every time someone called who might be able to help her career, she would do her act down the phone before putting them through to her boss.

• She once performed at a strip club where she was billed ‘Pepper January’ offering ‘comedy with spice.’ When she kept her clothes on and told jokes the audience booed her off stage, yelling: ‘Bring on the girls.’

• Rivers collected Fabergé eggs – and even Fabergé elephants.

• And she lived in a $30million three-storey penthouse overlooking Central Park, complete with a live-in butler. ‘Marie Antoinette would have lived here,’ she liked to say, ‘if she had money.’

• Prince Charles sent her a Christmas gift every year, including a pair of fancy teacups. ‘One year,’ she revealed in a New York interview, ‘I took a picture under my Christmas tree with the teacups and wrote, “How could you send me two teacups when I’m alone?” Another time I wrote, “I’m enjoying tea with my best friend!” and I sent a picture of me in a cemetery.’ And although he never acknowledged the letters himself, Charles told a mutual friend he always looked forward to them.

• She even foresaw her own death, sort of, joking in a 2012 interview: ‘I think it will be fabulous to die on the operation table because the publicity would keep the Fashion Police re-runs going for year.’

• ‘I would have been laughing at Auschwitz.’ Joan Rivers.

• ‘I don’t think I’m naturally good at anything. I think I have the ability to work and stay in until I pull something out of me.’ Eddie Izzard.

• A man dangles his naked testicles over live crabs in the new series of Ross Noble’s Freewheeling show on Dave. The comic got the willing volunteer to put his gonads in peril after asking his Twitter followers what they wanted to see more of on TV. ‘Turns out they want to see man taunt nature with his balls,’ the comic told the UKTV Live launch event yesterday – and challenged fellow guest David Attenborough to take note. Apparently the risk assessment for the stunt was a challenge...

• Noble also revealed that Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn now has a blue plaque at his former home in Northampton, thanks to the show. The unveiling was attended by a mariachi band and a woman dressed as Tina Turner, naturally.

• Meanwhile, a correction from the UKTV press office: ‘Please note as sent in the press release before it should be comedy legend Chevy Chase not Cheryl Chase that appears in the five part Monty Python's Best Bits (mostly) clip-show.’

• 'Scumbags sitcom sparks fury in Basildon,' screamed the front page of the Basildon Gazette this week, as we know there’s nothing the media like more than a bit of outrage. But read the story and you might notice a small thing missing… absolutely no one at all getting in the least bit upset about the online Essex-based sitcom, since the only people quoted were involved in the video, which so far has 3,000 views.

• Dom Joly has admitted that he stole the giant mobile phone which helped make him famous on Trigger Happy TV. The comic admitted: ‘I’d actually pinched it a few years earlier from outside a mobile phone shop in London. I picked it up, started playing with it and sort of walked off with it.’

• Paul Zerdin has admitted he uses his ventriloquist's dummies to chat up women in his audience. 'I've flirted with an attractive woman in the front row,' he tells Brighton's The Latest magazine. 'I would much rather have the puppet pick on a nice-looking woman than a complete moose.

• ITV2’s Ancient Roman sitcom Plebs might not seem 100 per cent accurate – but the writers have been consulting Professor Mary Beard to try to make things as authentic as possible. ‘Our first aim is to be funny, but if we can be historically accurate, we can,’ writer Sam Leifer says. ‘Mary Beard always gets back on email within 30 seconds.’

• Meanwhile, Ryan Sampson – who plays dim-witted slave Grumio – told journalists at a screening of series 2 that the Hungarian crew were baffled by the concept of moonies, after a script for one episode demanded that he bare his buttocks. He said one member of the crew came up to him after the shot and said she had two questions ‘Why would someone do that?’ and ‘Why are you so smooth?’ Seems like exposing himself is an occupational hazard as he also recalled channel boss Angela Jain making a set visit, and noticing that, while chatting in a dressing gown, ‘just the end of my penis was poking out’. ‘Angela was so cool,’ he added. ‘She just went, “Oh dear.”’ Series 2 starts later this month.

• Patrick Kielty is selling his Northern Ireland home after setting him base in the States with his wife Cat Deeley. The comic's Dundrum house – complete with games room, cinema room and home gym complete with mirrored walls – is on the market for £400,000 through agents Rodgers & Browne. Have a nose around here

• Tweets of the week
Robin Flavell (@RobinFlavell): I once tried to meet the actor who played The Equalizer, but I was distracted by his wife. I couldn't see Woodward for Dotrice.
Chris P (@Wordsmithgetxo): I make prosthetic feet for pandas. If you'd like to see my work I can show you some black & white faux toes.
Dean Burnett (@garwboy ): Trivia: the first famous person to have an image in the cloud was Batman

Published: 5 Sep 2014