• As a child, Charlie Drake came to an agreement with the manager of the Elephant and Castle Picture Palace in London: in return for letting him win the ten-shilling prize at every amateur talent contest, he slipped the manager half.

• Matt Lucas says: ‘If I was to play Hamlet it would be in a dress.’

• Before she was famous, Catherine Tate was a temp. At one company she was asked if she did Windows – and thought they were asking her to wash the windows, rather than use the software. ‘I thought it was a bit much and said they were too high,’ she says.

• Vanessa Feltz says she is ‘the recipient of many titillating texts’ from Russell Brand ‘which I thoroughly enjoy receiving’. Euugh. Meanwhile, Brand is currently on holiday on Mauritius – with his mum.

• Cornish comic Jethro is painfully shy offstage. He says: ‘I haven't been to a restaurant for ten years, haven't signed an autograph for five and don't walk down the street. I go nowhere.’

• Before he was a comic, Jerry Seinfeld’s jobs included a telemarketing scam, and selling fake jewellery. And – if Wikipedia is to be believed - during his time in college, he was an amateur wrestler who called himself The Jewish Terror.

SOURCES:Independent, The Scotsman, The Times, Metro/Daily Mail, London Evening Standard, Coast To Coast Tickets/Wikipedia