'You can't have a sitcom in space. There's no settee.'
WTF: Weekly Trivia File
• 'In comedy everybody feels like an outsider, that's why they've come into it. But I do feel that I am an outsider in a group of outsiders.' Shazia Mirza
• David O'Doherty tells an amazing story of 'my greatest moment as an international traveller ever' in the new Burn Your Passport podcast from Australia. He tells host Nazeem Hussain about checking into the Milton Keynes Hilton after a gig. When he got into his room, he noticed the TV was on. 'Not that uncommon in the chain hotels,' he notes. 'But get this. On the TV is me, playing the keyboard on some BBC TV show. Immediate thought is, "I'm in a foreign country. This is incredible. This is it. I have arrived"…' But then he noticed the 'fully naked man, lying there watching me on the TV' Then he looks up up to see the man from the TV actually in his room. O'Doherty dashed out, and admits: 'I didn't have time to think of anything smart to say, either. I wish I'd been like "Hey, do you want me to play live for you?"'
• Sara Pascoe has a Sigmund Freud finger puppet, which she talks to whenever she has a problem.
• Sharon Horgan is in the music video for Metronomy's new electrofunk track, Old Skool, with very big hair. Here 'tis:
• Sad news about the death of former head of BBC comedy, Gareth Gwenlan, this week – a man responsible in some way for just about every hit comedy from the 1980s. But there was one he just didn't get – Red Dwarf – and he famously turned it down, telling creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor: 'You can't have a sitcom in space. There's no settee.' As a result, when the show finally did make it to air, 'Gwenlan' appeared in the scripts as one of their made-up swear-words.
• Who said the BBC was trying to make its programmes appear more intellectual in the run-up to this week's White Paper?
@daraobriain I think I preferred the earlier stuff pic.twitter.com/41JWMBJBUm
— Paul Harrison (@FlatericUK) May 10, 2016
• British-based American stand-up Dave Fulton says he's not performing at the Edinburgh festival this year – as he's heading to the Utah salt flats to help try to set a new land speed record for a vintage motorcycle. 'I've been offered the chance to be part of a pit crew to go to the Bonneville salt flats at the end of August to help some guys set some land speed records on some vintage motorcycles,' he told Sean Hughes on his Under The Radar podcast. 'I'm going to hang out in the salt flats and try to get up to 150mph in a bike built in 1958.' The World Of Speed event on the flats
• Safeword comedian David Morgan will be taking over Attitude magazine's Twitter account for tomorrow night to live tweets aboutEurovision 2016. He said: 'Eurovision is honestly and un-ironically one of the highlights of my year. The fact it exists and we still do it is ridiculous and incredible.'
Tweets of the week
It would be scary to wake up in bed with a skeleton but not as scary as waking up in bed without a skeleton.
— paul bassett davies (@thewritertype) May 8, 2016
Who called it a burial at sea and not a gravey boat?
— Craig Deeley (@craiguito) May 13, 2016
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Imagine a world where everyone spoke like they were doing a TED talk.
— James Cook (@jamesecook) May 7, 2016
What if I were to tell you that that world is closer than you think.
Published: 13 May 2016
