WTF: Weekly trivia file

• 'I don't know many hilarious comics languishing in anonymity. If someone can smash an audience every time you don't see them performing to four people.' Russell Kane.

• Matt Richardson says he dabbled with an ouija board when a teenager – and got totally freaked out. The comedian, who hosts the W channel's forthcoming Celebrity Haunted Hotel said: 'There was a guy present I'd never met before and he wasn't touching the board. We were talking to this guy's grandmother and he asked "If it's my grandmother, what's my grandfather's name?" and the board got it right. We decided that was the time to stop…'

• Joel Dommett is the best comedian at snowboarding, according to Andrew Maxwell, co-founder of the Altitude Festival, held in the Alps.

• Don't be alarmed if a future robot gives you the come-on with a 'How you doin?' For Friends character Joey Tribbiani is being immortalised i a artificial intelligence project… although that may be the first time the word 'intelligence' has been linked to the character. Researchers at the University of Leeds are building a series of algorithms to learn how the Matt Le Blanc puts words together for use in a chatbot. The boffins analysed the body language, facial expressions and voice of the character to create his digital form.

• Kevin Bishop took to the icy British waters this week wearing only a modesty belt to recreate Nigel Farage's alleged skinny-dipping stunt – the way the divisive politician is said to have spent his last night at Ukip leader (before boomeranging back into the job). He took the plunge for the comedy Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back, which airs on BBC Two next Sunday (30th). He said: 'If someone had told me a few months ago that I would be skinny dipping in the sea on a chilly (and it was very chilly) autumn day as Nigel Farage, I'd have thought they were mad. Then again, if someone had told me that Farage would be Ukip leader again within weeks of resigning to get his life back, I'd have thought exactly the same thing, but here we are…' The make-up and prosthetics needed to transform Kevin into Farage took more three hours to apply and his body has been aged with a little help from post-production.

• The Bishop as Farage photo was pixellated when we received it. But that's nothing compared to American prudishnesss. For it turns out you can't even draw a cartoon cock and balls on network TV after 11.30pm at night, as Stephen Colbert discovered on Monday:

• Comedian Richard James had a lucky escape last Saturday when his car tyre blew out at 70mph in the outside lane of a dual carriageway, throwing his car into a spin, hitting the central reservation, and ricocheting into the hard shoulder. When he called the emergency services, he had to describe his location, which he said was near a 10ft orange elephant holding an ice cream. Not an hallucination caused by head injuries but a genuine landmark on the A38 outside Exeter. With some irony the accident happened just days after her told a comedy club in Falmouth that he planned to crash his car on the way home so he could join the 27 Club alongside the likes of Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, since it was his 28th birthday the following day,

• The legend of Malcolm Hardee lives on in America. John Fleming, who ghost-wrote his memoirs, sends us this image advertising Hardee's Burgers from the internet:

• Donald Trump got roundly booed at the supposedly light-hearted Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, as his 'jokes' about Hillary Clinton slavishly followed his campaign attack lines. But we did like this line: 'Michelle Obama made a speech and everyone loved it. It was great. My wife, Melania, made the exact same speech and everyone gets on her case…'

• The Red Dwarf theme as if played on an 8-bit computer? Why not…

Tweets of the week

Why Leslie Phillips was never nicknamed the Fresh Prince of Hellair is beyond me

— Craig Deeley (@craiguito) October 16, 2016

promoting #antislaveryday by tweeting on you iphone is like promoting global warming awareness by lighting a pile of tires on fire.

— Bobby Mair (@BobbyMair) October 18, 2016

Post Office are looking for temp staff to help over Christmas.
They need three men with good franking sense and more.

— Johnny Vague (@jonnyvague) October 17, 2016

Published: 21 Oct 2016