WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• Johnny Vegas: ‘I don't do standup anymore, I couldn't eat during the day because of the nerves. I loved my job then and they were the best years of my fucking life in terms of living.’

• Rab C Nesbitt’s return is all thanks to Glasgow airport baggage handler John Smeaton. The comedy’s writer Ian Pattison was watching last year’s failed terror attack that Smeaton waded into when he found himself thinking: ‘I wish Rab was back now, he'd have something to say about that.’ Pattison hinted that a similar incident could feature in his script for the 45-minute special BBC Two has commissioned for Christmas.

• Chris Rock says he always fears the worse at gigs. ‘It happens to everybody, man,’ he said. ‘I prepare for the worst. I think every show I do, I realise I could get booed off the stage and they could throw tomatoes…’ He likens his feelings that success might be short-lived to that of Nineties rapper Vanilla Ice: ‘One day you're Vanilla Ice, and the next day you're... Vanilla Ice.’

• But those fears didn’t stop Russell Brand asking Rock for tips about hosting the MTV’s Video Music Awards. ‘Go in hard - no one cares about anything except you have to have a good beginning,’ he told him. ‘So I might take my shirt off and have lipstick on my nipples,’ is Russell’s solution.

• Because of the VMAs, Brand’s been in the news rather a lot this week: admitting fancying Zara Phillips (‘She’s hot… when she’s in the riding gear… oh dear things happen for me’); saying he felt an irresistible urge to grope the Queen when he met her at last year's Royal Variety Show; and flirting with Eva Longoria Parker on the Jay Leno show. The Desperate Housewives star gave Russell an M&M sweet she was, strangely, carrying in her cleavage. He said: ‘This one's melted a little bit from your cleavage. Could I have the bit that's still in there?’ Here he is on the show:
  
  And here he is after Eva oined him on the sofa:
  

• Gavin and Stacey star Ruth Jones’s pet tortoise has narrowly escaped death. Tom went missing for five weeks but was finally rescued after being spotted by a worker at a recycling deport in Cardiff, just before he was about to disappear into the waste processing machinery.

• Meanwhile co-writer James Corden says he still checks his material with his dad – especially a sketch from his new show about a young Christian group trying to act cool. ‘My dad’s a Christian bookseller, so I had to run the new material past him. He thought it was a laugh.’

• A series of press junkets for Ricky Gervais’s new movie, Ghost Town, apparently had to be abandoned because of spooky activity. Movie execs chose to host the launch at the reputedly haunted Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, but one of them admitted: ‘We got so much more than we bargained for. Two runners say they saw the figure of a lady in the full-length mirror. The final straw came when a production assistant stayed in the room earmarked for Ricky. He said he woke up with someone whistling in his ear, even though he was alone, then heard a giggle before being pushed out of bed.’ Gervais, however, has pooh-poohed the reports, saying he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

• When American actress Eva Mendes was asked if she has any unfulfilled ambitions, she replied: ‘Yes, to appear in an episode of Ricky Gervais's show Extras. It's one of my favourite shows ever and they turned me down. I was like, guys, you don't understand I am quite a big deal in the States, and I don't go on TV shows, but I really want to go on your show. I love Ricky Gervais, I love British humour - it's my kind of humour, but they won't have me.’

• At the Shrewsbury Laughter Lines comedy club this week, compere John Warburton found his gaze unavoidably drawn to the ample cleavage of one woman in the audience. So when it came to choosing someone to start the applause, it was to her he naturally turned. Only problem was, he was so distracted by her décolletage that he had failed to notice that she had only one arm. Very Zen.

• For this week’s bizarre stand-up clip, we’d love to have the Lee Hurst one… but sadly, no one seems to have recorded that on their phone. Wonder why? Instead, here’s one from US comic John DeBoer and a VERY drunk female heckler:
  

• Loaded’s Laftas pride themselves on being ‘credible’ comedy awards. The claim would be better had they not misspelt the names of James Corden, Mathew Horne, Olivia Colman, Flight Of The Conchords and Noel Edmonds on their official list of nominations.

SOURCES:Daily Mirror, Scotland on Sunday, Las Vegas Review Journal, PostChronicle.com, Metro/NBC, Radio One Newsbeat, thelondonpaper, Daily Star, imdb.com, Manchestercomedyforums, YouTube, Loaded

Published: 5 Sep 2008