Russell Brand's narcissistic foreplay...

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

  • Don’t give people what they want. Give them what you want. You’ll be surprised how often they like it.’ Harry Hill

  • Russell Brand has an opinion of hecklers few of his comics would share. ‘If you’re standing on stage in front of 10,000 people and you’ve taken 50 quid off each of them., they should shout what they want.’ he said.

  • Brand adds that he also acted like narcissistic Larry Sanders in the early days of his fame. ‘ I’d go home with a bird after filming Big Brother and say, “Come on, let’s fucking watch me now!”,’ he told Shortlist. ‘Stick on a video of the show, saying, “This is a good bit… fast-forward, here I am again… Now let’s go to bed and you can get more of me.”’

  • Rowan Atkinson caused £910,000 of damage when he crashed his beloved McLaren F1 supercar in 2011. Yet it was still cheaper for McLaren technicians to spend a year repairing the 240mph car than write it off, according to reports of the insurance claim this week. Atkinson, who fractured shoulder blade in the crash in Cambridgeshire, bought the car for £640,000 in 1997 with the proceeds from his first Mr Bean film, but its value has significantly increased since; one sold last year for £3.5 million.

  • Ben & Jerry’s have unveiled a Liz Lemon frozen yoghurt in honour of 30 Rock’s final episode.

  • A new pub in Deal, Kent, is to be renamed the Sir Norman Wisdom, after fans protests against Weatherspoon’s original intention of calling it The Five Bells. The comic spent some of his childhood years in the town, and it’s only apt a pub should be named after him... after all, a lot of people will be falling down in there. Mr Grimsdale!

  • Want to pop the question, but need a little help? Let Stephen Fry do it for you... by Twitter, of course. The comic will write a special engagement tweet on Valentine's Day to the winner of an online auction in aid of elephant charity Kissing for Conservation.  Bidding currently stands at £150.

  • It’s been a good week for amateur film-maker Richard Woolford. His animation The Grave won Chortle’s monthly £200 video competition at the start of it... But that was dwarfed this morning when he scooped the £5,000 top prize in the Comedy Shorts competition run by Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival, which starts today. Meanwhile, in another bid for some column inches, the festival today named Bradley Wiggins as Britain’s greatest living wit. Somewhat unfairly, comedians weren’t allowed to be included.

  • When reporting on the booking habits of TV production companies that are also agents earlier, we said that Russell Howard’s Good News Extra, an Avalon production, had only ever featured one act from arch rival Off The Kerb, Seann Walsh. However, we’ve since learnt that at the time, he was actually represented by Glorious Talent... bringing the grand total of Off The Kerb acts given exposure on the series to zero.

  • John Bishop’s no fan of the planned HS2 high-speed rail link. ‘HS2 costs £33 billion and knocks an hour of an journey to London - are we really all in that much of a rush to get to the smoke?’ he told his 1.6million Twitter followers. And no wonder he’s against it... the planned route goes within a few hundred yards of his £2.2million Cheshire mansion.

  • Tweets of the week
    Roger Quimbly (@ RogerQuimbly ): If the past really is a foreign country, why is the Daily Mail so keen on it?
    Robin Flavell (@RobinFlavell): They’re remaking the Tommy Steele classic Half A Sixpence. It’s 3D
    Nigey (@ koalaslament ): I hope the next Rambo movie is called 'Rambo No. 5' and its just Stallone dancing through the jungle shooting a little bit of this and that.

  • Published: 8 Feb 2013

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