WTF: Weekly trivia file

• 'Comedy has always been the poor cousin of drama, but we are effectively doing drama with jokes.' Channel 4 deputy head of comedy Nerys Evans.

• Jerry Seinfeld has revealed that he's spent seven years writing a single joke. And he still isn't happy with it. 'The quality of it does not reflect all that time, it's not that good,' he admitted on Australian radio. ' I'm happy with it now and I love the completely giant waste of time that it was. I could have written an entire act in the time I put into this one joke.' The gag, he explained is that a tuxedo 'is worn in situations where you just need to fool a small group of people for a short period of time: Awards, honourings, strip joints, rip-off restaurants, casinos ... there's just a quick little scam here that we're going to need this outfit for. That's the essence of the joke and I don't know why I could not find a way to express that, that that's how I see tuxedos.'

• Michael McIntyre will sing Coldplay songs on Graham Norton's show tonight. You have been warned.

• Billy Connolly has a routine in his new High Horse DVD about the best heckle he ever heard of. What he doesn't do is attribute it to David Baddiel, who often cites it as the best he ever heard first-hand. It wasn't shouted at him, but at an open spot, at the Comedy Store called Cynical Sid. Here's Connolly telling the tale:

• Just call him mystic Minchin… Tim might be better off sticking to musical theatre than pundity after scoring zero out of three for this bit of crystal-ball gazing from the summer:

By year's end, Britain will still be in the EU, a democrat will still be POTUS, & Australia will have marriage equality. You heard it here.

— Tim Minchin (@timminchin) June 22, 2016

• After her show at the New York Comedy Festival last weekend, Tig Notaro told her audience that she had a special treat for them, and introduced the Indigo Girls. But after a deafening the folk-rock duo didn't appear. 'That was awkward,' she said. Undeterred, she checked backstage and tried again. Still nothing. She then spent ten minutes introducing the band in various ways, telling the increasingly sceptical audience they would 'look very dumb' when the musicians appeared. They never did. Read an account of the gig on Vulture

• Russell Brand has named his newborn daughter Mabel.

• Dawn French says she regrets 'massively' not doing drugs when she was a young comic, adding: 'I am intending to do loads of drugs when I'm much older. Some hot drugs coursing through your veins would add to the fun of being old.'

• Most cash-strapped online publishers suffer spelling mistakes – Chortle very much included. But even we're impressed by the Hucknall Dispatch's attempt at Josh Howie's surname….

• Sticking with local newspapers, the Staffordshire Newsletter has this story headlined: 'Ahir Shah brings the laughs to Stafford Gatehouse Theatre - with a cracking joke about lizards' then NEVER mentions anything about lizards…

• Dave Gorman says he covers 2.4 miles walking backwards and forwards across the stage on tour each night.

• French comedian Remi Gaillard has today locked himself into a kennel at a French dog shelter, where he will live like one of the animals, until all the 300 of the abandoned pets there are adopted– or he manages to raise €50,000 (£44,700) in donations. The stunt is being live streamed on his Facebook page

• Shappi Khorsandi has revealed she was asked to appear on this year's I'm A Celebrity... But turned it down because she didn't want to be parted from her children.

• It's a fairly low-level 'comedian causes offence' story, but David Mitchell has apologised for mispronouncing the name of a Norfolk village. The comedian was explaining on Radio 4's The Unbelievable Truth how Happisburgh – population 889 – is home to the oldest human footprints outside Africa when he pronounced its name phonetically. After locals pointed out the error of his ways, he tweeted: 'Sorry for mispronouncing Happisburgh in Norfolk on @UnbelieveTruth. It seems you say it "Haysbrough" not how I did. Sorry, I didn't realise.'

Tweets of the week

The only thing making this easier is imagining Trump is a loaf of bread that came to life and is on an adventure.

— Daniel Rigby (@danielrigby) November 9, 2016

Reach out to those who suffer in silence and thank them for keeping the noise down.

— Donna T (@sweetg35) 9 November 2016

Do you have a shit joke but want it to go viral? Write it on a chalk board outside a pub and take a photo of it

— Adam Hess (@adamhess1) November 11, 2016

Published: 11 Nov 2016