'A punch in the face is quicker than court'

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

  • News from the set of the Inbetweeners movie: Simon Bird had to vomit over a crowd of extras. Nice.

  • Simon Day reckons ‘stand-up is now a career option for people who aren’t funny’. He added: ‘I did a gig and there was a guy on the bill who was really professional but he wasn’t funny. Someone told me he’d learned how to do it on a stand-up course at college. I believe comedians should be proper comics and maybe look a bit odd rather than a guy in a T-shirt who says: “Isn’t it funny when you go into the Apple Store and…” But maybe I would say that because I’m an old man.’

  • Despite being a serial victim of joke theft, Milton Jones says the comedy circuit is pretty good at policing itself. ‘Someone getting a punch in the face backstage is a lot quicker than going to court,’ he said. There is a lot of money at stake in the stand-up world now and no one should be making a living off stolen goods.’

  • 21-year-old Olivia Ketchell, of Whitley Bay, has had Stephen Fry’s face – the version that appeared on the recent Walkers crisp packets –  tattooed on to her calf.

  • After 20 solid minutes of heckling at Joker’s Wild in New Haven, Connecticut, compere Pat Oates decided to bring his nemesis on stage. The result is as much as a car crash as you’d expect:

  • Dawn French is back dating, eight months after her divorce from Lenny Henry, saying: ‘'I've got lots of interesting gentlemen callers - but I can make the choice... I'm trying to have a bit of fun every now and again. But I am not a predator, I am not going out looking.'

  • Noel Fielding was mistaken for a girl by BBC Wimbledon commentator Boris Becker after being picked out by the cameras. The Mighty Boosh star took it in good grace, though, saying: ‘I’ve got a lot of respect for him - I mean I wouldn’t get in a cupboard with him, but I do like him a lot. He’s a cool character. I’d like to challenge Boris to a Swingball match Imagine that? You and me - my garden. Man to man. Or man to girl.’

  • Mind you, not everyone at the All-England club was happy to see Fielding on Centre Court... The chatty comic got told to ‘shush’ by a tennis fan in the seat behind him, who admonished him: ‘‘Do you mind? Are you going to talk like that through the whole thing?’.

  • Tweets Of The Week:
    @Richard Wiseman: Just bought box of animal crackers but not eating them because the seal was broken.
    NickMotown: When Jeffrey Archer describes someone as being 'in his bad books', it requires quite a bit of narrowing down.
    @GlennyRodge: ‘My wife's going on holiday to South America.’ ‘Venezuela?’ ‘Since when has “to venezuele” been a verb?’ ‘I was guessing the country.’ ‘Oh.’


SOURCES: Club 18-30’s Free magazine, Metro, Irish Times, YouTube, Now magazine, BBC Sport, BBC Sport, Newcastle Chronicle, Twitter

Published: 24 Jun 2011

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