WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• 'I won’t adapt an art form to a bunch of idiots with their phones' US comedian Jen Kirkman

• Bono has told American politicians they should send comedians into the Islamic State terrorist heartland. 'Don’t laugh, but I think that comedy should be deployed,' the U2 frontman told a Senate subcommittee at Capitol Hill, as he argued that comedy is a better weapon to fight the extremists than actual weapons. He said: 'It's like, you speak violence, you speak their language. But you laugh at them when they are goose-stepping down the street and it takes away their power. So I am suggesting that the Senate send in Amy Schumer and Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen. I'm actually serious'. This is him saying it:

• Julia Davis was once in a band called The Hand-Knitted Air Rifles.

• Talk about ambitious. News reaches us of a solo show from Britain’s 'newest stand-up comedian'. How can Chris M’Gra make that claim? Because the show, Bewigged, at the Stantonbury Theatre in Milton Keynes next month will be his very first comedy performance in front an audience. Yet tickets are £12...and he's filming it for a 'TV special-type thing'.

• Barry Humphries was doing a show once where a usually dependable gag failed. Afterwards asked his producer, 'Why didn’t that last joke work?' and his producer said, 'Because you had already done it earlier in the set' – then told him it was time to retire. The Dame Edna creator, who has indeed retired from live gigs, recounted the story to comic Damian Power when they met at the nomination announcement for the Barry Award, named in Humphries' honour, at the Melbourne Comedy Festival this week.

• And he told Luisa Omielan, who was wearing her promotional What Would Beyoncé Do? jumper: 'I hope Beyoncé has a What Would Luisa Do?! Jumper'

• Thanks to Matt Berry for tweeting this gem - The Doors’ Light My Fire set to the Steptoe & Son theme tune.

• Stand-up has 'gotten really, really soft,' the founder of Canada's Yuk Yuk's chain of clubs believes Mark Breslin says too many comics are delivering autobiographical anecdotes that are 'tiny little moments that don't really mean anything'.

Tweets of the week

The first rule of Chinese Whispers Club is you never walk about shiny wasp horse cubs.

— GlennyRodge (@GlennyRodge) April 11, 2016

Sometimes in a restaurants when the waitress asks "What can I get you?" I say "Can I get a WOOP WOOP?" & we laugh & I come across VERY well.

— Aisling Bea (@WeeMissBea) April 12, 2016

Hosted a pub quiz to raise money for research into undiagnosed heart problems. Everything was going really well 'til the sudden death round.

— Gary Delaney (@GaryDelaney) April 10, 2016

Published: 15 Apr 2016