Weekly Trivia File

• Watch out, we’re about to break the first and second rules of Fight Club… The following apparently genuine, unsolicited email was received at Camp Chortle this week: ‘I would like to have a fist fight with Sean Lock. If Mr Lock is ‘up for it’ I will give £500 to charity – win, lose or draw. Can you arrange for us to fight, please?’

• Russell Brand has been spotted buying a pair of binoculars from his local photography store in Hampstead, North London.

• After appearing in Cirque de Celebrité, Celebrity Scissorhands and Celebrity Masterchef, stand-up Ninia Benjamin continues her career as professional reality show contestant with The Underdog Show for Living TV. Camp singing comic Jason Wood is also taking part.

• John Cleese: ‘I did have a dreadful mother. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? But it’s true. She was classically self-centred. Always thought entirely of herself. And she lived to 101 - I thought I’d never get rid of her.’

• Another poorly-described YouTube clip. American stand-up Chris Crofton ‘destroying’ a heckling crowd. Seems more like a no-score draw to us.
  

• But for our real bad stand-up of the week, it’s this guy. Sorry about the video quality. And the joke quality:
  

• Like booze, but wish there were more ways to drink it surreptitiously? Well Alexander Armstrong has a tip – put sherry in your soup. The comic and oenophile says: ‘Sherry is such a great drink and so versatile. I keep a bottle in the fridge into which I put dried chilli. It’s wonderful poured over soup.’

• Ronnie Corbett helped launch an ironing service in Croydon this week, and next week he's off to North Berwick to unveil a bronze sculpture of an Arctic tern.

• Doug Stanhope has been railing against Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival, very publicly shunning the event because he says what comedians are paid to peform there ‘would look low-end to gutter cocksuckers’. Still, that didn’t stop him swigging the festival’s free backstage booze or hanging out with all the other performers and industry types in the hotel bar this week… See his less-than-complimentary thoughts on the festival here.

• Let no one say Morecambe is boring! This breaking news from the local paper, which spotted Michael Palin in the Lancashire town yesterday: ‘Palin travelled in a cab to Lancaster train station, where he talked with the driver about the state of the traffic between Morecambe and Lancaster.’ Stay tuned for more exciting developments…

SOURCES: Chortle, thelondonpaper, Metro, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, YouTube, YouTube, Croydon Guardian, Dougstanhope.com, Lakeland Echo

Published: 25 Jul 2008