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Andrew Lawrence's Brexit gloat | WTF: Weekly Trivia File

Andrew Lawrence's Brexit gloat

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

•'I've thrown all my eyeliner in the bin,' Russell Kane.

• Stand-up Andrew Lawrence has been gloating over the referendum result. The bete noire of the comedy circuit put a £200 bet on Britain leaving the EU almost a month ago – netting £1,100 at odds of 9/2.

•How many of the Edinburgh Fringe comedians are female? Isabelle Adam, producer of Comedy Club 4 Kids, has crunched the numbers and found that of 643 comics with solo comedy shows, 178 are women - which is 27.7 per cent - and 465 are men - which is 72.3 per cent. And she also found that there were 47 non-white stand-ups doing solo shows, 7.3 per cent.

•Ronnie Barker famously disguised his identity as a writer for The Two Ronnies, contributing sketches under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley. But Power Monkeys creator Guy Jenkin has revealed how he went even further, posing as a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Bishop Stortford called Sarah Yallop to get sketches onto Spitting Image. Jenkin had been a writer on the satirical puppet show but was fired in a 'clearout of the tired old writers' when producers decided they wanted 'younger, female writers' after the first series in 1984. He even recalled on executive telling an interviewer: 'It's a sad reflection on the tired writers that the best material this week is written by a 14-year-old schoolgirl.' Sarah was even invited to the end-of-series party, but Jenkin's writing partner, Andy Hamilton, who was in on the ruse, told comic Dan Clark on his Fubar Radio podcast: 'Unfortunately we couldn't persuade Guy to go dressed as a 14-year-old girl.'

Red Dwarf Lego
• A Red Dwarf fan is trying to get Lego to make an official set based on the sci-fi comedy. Bob Turner has attracted almost 4,000 votes on the Lego Ideas website, and if a suggestions gets 10,000 supporters the project goes into review and could become an official set. His set features Dave Lister, Arnold Rimmer, Cat, Kryten plus alter-egos Ace Rimmer and Daune Dibbley, as well as Lister and Rimmer's bunk beds, an airlock door and one of the ship's mischievous Skutters.

•Comedians may generally be an atheist bunch, but Sally Phillips thinks that they are 'a lot closer to God' than many of her fellow church-goers. The famously Christian comedy actress argues: 'Comedians are genuinely looking for the truth of who people are, what they want, how they behave and why – and looking to pull back masks and reveal truth. And I think that's what Jesus was all about.'

• If you subscribe to both Chortle and UK Vogue on Twitter – and why wouldn't you, you're a stylish comedy fan – you'll have got this nice image in your feed yesterday:

•Joanna Lumley almost didn't take up the role of Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, as she and Jennifer Saunders didn't hit it off in the beginning. 'It was very awkward at the read-through,' Lumley tells Graham Norton on his BBC One chat show tonight. 'It was just the two of us and she just stared at me. I told my agent I didn't want to do it and she said, "It's just a pilot, just do it…"' Jennifer interjects, 'Joanna just wasn't what I had in mind for Patsy. I saw her a low-life journalist. But Joanna brought so much more to the role and we had fun inventing the character.'

•It sounds a bit mafia, but Gary Cook, of Irish sketch series Apres Match, says he was warned off making fun of Bono by some of the U2 star's inner circle. 'I remember some of Bono's mates telling me my impression of Bono was not really good enough. And really, to steer clear, that I shouldn't be doing it,' he told he Irish Sunday Mirror. 'His Praetorian Guard kinda threatened me, you know? In a kind of nuanced, humorous way. But... they were like best friends on the payroll. "You're not allowed to say that" – some people kind of see themselves as above it.'

Tweets of the week

• Funny, uplifting tweets a little thin on the ground at the moment, but we'll give it a shot…

Published: 24 Jun 2016

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