WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• 'I'm going to be the Sade of stand-up. Do it every seven years or something.' Chris Rock.

• Tonight's Have I Got News For You was recorded only this morning, so as to include all the latest from the election. However Jimmy Mulville, boss of production company Hat Trick, was less than flattering about one of the guests: 'An hour into the recording of @haveigotnews @jonsnowC4 makes his first funny remark,' he tweeted. '[He] is given an ovation more out of relief.' Romesh Ranganathan is also on tonight's show, which is hosted by Jo Brand.

• As we have a long, hard think about what we as a nation did yesterday, let's lighten the mood by looking back at the late Malcolm Hardee's attempts to get elected. In 1987, he sent out this leaflet containing the ringing endorsement from Jools Holland that he was 'balanced and untrustworthy… the kind of person who would do well in British politics'. And so confident was he of success that he held his 'victory celebration party' two days before the by-election poll – at his Tunnel Club, of course. Undeterred by getting just 124 votes for his Rainbow Dream Ticket, he stood again in the 1992 general election, where he polled 103 votes. It was of course a PR stunt – as well as financially dodgy. He lost his £500 deposit, but got a 'free' mailout to 10,000 people which would normally have cost over £3,000 in postage alone. Here's the declaration of that result, posted on YouTube by the makers of a new film about the Tunnel:

• An anagram of Al Murray Pub Landlord FKUP is 'Pull Up, Dorky Barman Fraud'

• After Tracy Morgan was admitted to hospital following his serious car crash last year, Joan Rivers sent him a bouquet of flowers – which were already dead. The card she sent with them said: 'These flowers would've been dead anyway by the time you get out of the hospital.' According to Rivers' daughter Melissa in her new Book Of Joan, the message had its intended effect and made him laugh.

• American comedian Gallagher is keen to leave a legacy, saying: 'I have many ideas and I want to leave them to the world.' And he has issued a long list of said ideas to a radio station in the States – from cartoon characters based on sub-atomic particles, amusement parks for dogs, his own Spanish translation of the Stars & Stripes to be played at ball games, dating the bay of California to create a 62,000 sq mile reservoir and, rather creepily, a range of children's high-heeled shoes called Just Like Mommy's. Sadly, no monkey tennis.

• Steve Martin is to be inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall Of Fame in Oklahoma City in September.

• Miranda Hart put her foot in it with Prince Harry, when her attempts to 'jokily' flirt with the Royal – 12 years her younger – backfired. It started when she made some gags on the subject at the Diamond Jubilee Concert in 2012. At a reception at Buckingham Palace afterwards, the comic said to Harry: 'I am sorry about the silly flirting jokes I did about you.' Recalling the incident on tonight's Graham Norton show, Hart explained: 'He said, "That's fine, but it's a shame there isn't music and dancing here because we could dance and start a rumour." He was being really sweet and endearing and I said, as a joke, but way too dryly so he thought I was being serious, "I can hear music." And he just went. He was gone before I could say it was a joke. It was so awful and so embarrassing.'

• You know Paul O'Grady, right? Comedian and presenter? Used to be Lily Savage? No? You DO know. He's the guy from Aldington, near Ashford. Yes! At least that's how the Kent Messenger decided to describe him in a painfully parochial headline…

• One of the gigs Louise Reay, pictured, top, performed as a teenager has stuck with her for a very good reason. As she told blogger John Fleming: ' I first did stand-up when I was 16. I stopped at 18 after a weird gig in Eastbourne. They had a racist joke competition led by the compere. Then a man in the audience said: "If I hammer a nail into my penis, can I get free entry to this club night for the rest of the year?" And they said: "Yeah! Sure!" and they ran around and got a stool and a hammer and a nail and he hammered it in. An hour later, he stood up and said: "If I hammer a second nail into my penis, can I get free drinks for the rest of the year?" and the audience went "Yeeaaaaahhhh!!!! and basically, like, at the end of the night, he was doing a wee into a basin and I went to wash my hands next to him and he turned to me and said: Oh, I really like your set. And wee was coming out of the different holes in his dick. So I thought: I can never do comedy again and I didn't do stand-up for about six years after that.'

• Bill Cosby's getting a lot of heckles these days about the allegations against him… but this super-confident idiot was stranger still:

• Stephen Colbert has auctioned off the desk and set of The Colbert Report. Together with other donations, $800,000 has been raised to fund classroom projects in his native South Carolina. The Colbert Report ended last December as its host prepares to take over from David Letterman.

• Tweets Of The Week

Can a country have Stockholm Syndrome?

— Paul McGann (@pauljmcgann) May 8, 2015

I've entered a competition to tell the best joke about digging for diamonds. Mines a gem.

— Jay Tuvz (@JayTuvz) May 6, 2015

If the ability to govern a country depends on being able to eat a bacon sandwich I fear for Israel. #EdMiliband #TheSun

— Tony Cowards (@TonyCowards) May 6, 2015

Published: 8 May 2015