The week's comedy trivia

• Paris Hilton has rescued an injured Oompa-Loompa from a Miami comedy club.

• Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen needed some help in the new Sweeney Todd movie – in the trouser department. ‘Yeah, we augmented,’ costume designer Colleen Atwood admitted, saying that ‘a little quilted thing’ helped fill the comic’s body-hugging trousers for his role as the demon barber’s arch-rival Adolfo Pirelli. But she was keen to achieve authenticity: ‘We tried different materials and different sizes and positions,’ she said. ‘You kind of forget what you're doing, and you're just sort of looking at what looks the best. I like that a lot of people think it's real.’

  Stephen Fry: ‘I have been blessed with two things – big feet and a big memory.’

• Maybe Mohammed Fayed is on to something. At the Royal Variety show, Stephen K Amos joked that TV was so narrow-minded about black comedians he couldn’t get his own shows until Lenny Henry died. In the obligatory line-up afterwards, Prince Philip went up to Amos and said: ‘You’re the young man who wants Lenny Henry to die? That can be arranged…’

• Michael Parkinson says he made Peter Kay what he is today. ‘He was my warm-up man, this little fat lad from Bolton,’ said the chat king. ‘I said, “Bugger off, Kay, go and learn how to be a comic”.’

• Noel Fielding says he’s overwhelmed with the female attention he’s received on the back of the Mighty Boosh’s success. ‘It's like getting chatted up 1,000 times a year,’ he said. ‘Just weird. You know when a girl fancies you, or when you've got a chance with a girl, and to have that from so many girls, for not doing anything specific, so regularly - it's a bit of a headfuck. And you wouldn't believe how blatant they are!’ But he denied the much-reported rumour that he’d had a fling with Courtney Love, saying that when he went to her hotel room all they had was ‘a cup of peppermint tea

• Russell Brand claims he found it hard to keep himself away from Rupert Everett on the set of St Trinian's, saying: "People ask, “Were you not tempted by those schoolgirls in the film?” I told them. ”They're children but Rupert Everett was a really tasty mistress. How I kept my hands off him was a mystery. ”’

• OK, to explain that Paris Hilton story up top (although it does sound much better without the context). The heiress came to the aid of pint-sized performer Robin Sherwood, when the evening at Beacher's Madhouse got rowdy. The crowd rushed the stage, shoving Sherwood, who was in full costume and orange makeup, into a metal stage support, slicing open his leg. ‘Paris screamed for help and jumped up to move everyone away from him,’ says a witness. ‘She held Robin's hand and said the sweetest things to keep him calm.’ Sherwood needed 50 stitches.

SOURCES: NY Daily News, E! Online, Daily Express, thelondonpaper , Hello! , Evening Standard Daily Mail, NY Daily News

Published: 14 Dec 2007