WTF: Winterval Trivia File

• 'Q. Which playwright was terrified of Christmas? A. Noël Coward.' Peter Serafinowicz writes a Christmas cracker joke

• You know you're in trouble when bookies start offering odds that you're going to be sacked. Ladbrokes has 5/1 on that Channel 4 will fire Frankie Boyle. Meanwhile, the Mirror today said advertisers were pulling their adverts from the show online.. 'L’Oreal and Nestle are appalled by the comic’s sick jokes on Tramadol Nights.' said the paper. That's L'Oreal, which sells a cream in India to make women's skin whiter; was last year found guilty of racism in a French court and has faced calls for boycotts for both its animal testing policy and operations in the Occupied Territories; and Nestle, which has long been criticised for it policies of promoting powdered baby milk in developing countries. 'Nespresso offers its sincere apologies for any distress caused,' said the company.

• Lee Mack used to get a bottle of Lucozade off his mum every Christmas – and loved it. He said: 'It was actually seen as a luxury item in the days when you could only buy it in chemists and it came in a glass bottle with gold shiny foil. It genuinely was my best present.But it was probably my worst present too, because one year it smashed and leaked all over my Stretch Armstrong.'

• Vic Reeves has revealed that he made the balsa-wood guitar on the cover of Jeff Beck’s self-titled 2003 album. The comic explained: ‘’It was Jeff’s birthday and I made a hillbilly guitar for him out of a bit of balsa wood and a broomstick, and it said, “If this guitar gets lost and you find it, bring it back to Jeff”, and it had a bit of string to hang around his neck. It wasn’t a real guitar, it had one string.’ The guitar hero hung it on his wall, and when the photographer came round to snap Beck for the album, he spotted the homemade gift and said: ‘No, I don’t want you – I want that’. So the album has the guitar as the sleeve. ‘But I don’t get any credit on it,’ Reeves told Rolling Stone-turned-DJ Ronnie Wood on Absolute radio this week. The Shooting Stars host also revealed how at Beck’s 2005 wedding, many of the guests got up on stage to join the rockabilly boogie-woogie band hired for the occasion – and that’s how he got to be on stage with Jimmy Page and Paul McCartney, singing I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts. ‘That’s a one-in-a-lifetime isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Macca knew all the words, did the whole lot. I just stood there like a plonker.’

• Dave Spikey had to get rescued from his home by the Red Cross this week – well, he was doing a benefit gig for them…. He called organizers of the show in Sheffield to say there was ‘no chance’ he’d be able to make the show, as he was snowed in at his Chorley home. But Red Cross member John Pickett was having none of it, and rescued the comic in his Land Rover, and got him to the gig that raised £6,000.

• Question to David Mitchell: 'Do you ever get a bit sick of Robert Webb?' Answer: 'Oh God yes.'

• Miranda Hart says she has to blank out any possible humiliation before shooting some of the scenes for her BBC Two sitcom. ' I only appear without a skirt or dance in my knickers because I hope it will get a big laugh,' she says. 'I don’t think about it when I’m doing it, I can’t. If I started thinking: "Here I am showing my fat, horrible body" I wouldn’t do it. I just don’t think about it. I just think about the comedy.'

• Flight of the Conchords star Rhys Darby has become embroiled in a row with a New Zealand jeweller who told off his five-year-old son. Little Finn and his mum Rosie went to the store in Ponsonby to choose a present for his nanny – but when the child was on the way to pay for it, the shop owner snatched it off him. Rosie protested: 'He is taking that to the counter to buy it', but she said the jeweller snapped back: 'We don't allow children to do that, and don't bother coming back, you're banned'. Rosie said: 'What made me shake with rage about this experience is that he assumed that Finn was stealing it - which insulted him, and it insulted my parenting skills.' The jeweller denies the Darbys are banned, but said: 'We don't allow children to handle our stock.'

• Malcolm Hardee's old mate John Fleming has written an account of spending Christmas with the late characterful comedian, which pretty much sums up what he was like. Read it here.

• Bill Bailey said he encountered some right old musical divas during his time on Never Mind The Buzzcocks... and it tended to be the least successful who were the most awkward. 'The people who’d had one hit in 1984 tended to be the most demanding,' he said. 'They’d demand sushi and be told they had to have a cheese and pickle sandwich like everyone else.'

• Tweets of the week:
  David Schneider (@davidschneider): I'll say one thing for this government: since they got in they have succeeded in drastically cutting the temperature.
  Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers): Aging stinks. At this age, “getting lucky” means being able to find my car in the mall parking lot when I’m out holiday shopping.

• Merry Christmas

SOURCES: The Observer, Daily Mirror, Sky.com Absolute Radio, Chortle,The Observer, Sunday Express, New Zealand Herald, thejohnfleming.com, Metro, Twitter

Published: 24 Dec 2010