Along came a spider (or several hundred...)

WTF: Weekly Triva File

  • Ricky Gervais has been running in Hampstead Heath despite the snow. ‘Fucking cold though,’ he said. ‘Even the most dedicated homosexuals can't be wanking each other off in this weather.’

  • Last Christmas, Russell Howard’s eight-year-old cousin sat in a dog basket for an hour – just so he’d get a mention in his stage act.

  • Talking of Russell Howard; once at a party he told someone – for no reason at all – that he was Robert Kilroy Silk’s nephew.

  • American stand-up Dane Cook has had to throw out his Christmas tree, after discovering it was infested by poisonous spiders. After he’d hung up the decorations, he spotted a brown spider in the branches… and then hundreds of its babies that had just hatched. He said: ‘I had a bit of a Christmas debacle. We get a tree, we decorate it, my sister and I. We come in last night, and at the bottom of the tree you could see this big spider. I was pretty sure it was a brown recluse... When I look up at the star, there’s a cocoon with hundreds of just hatched spiders. We can’t take the decorations off, we just have to get rid of the tree.’

  • When staying in hotels, Dara O Briain writes in the Gideon Bibles: ‘By the way there's porn on the telly…’

  • There’s a bit of Twitter activity suggesting bad names for improv groups. Among the best/worst so far: Throw Me A Line; Premises, Premises and – courtesy of IT Crowd writer Graham Linehan – We Were Only Following Orders. #badimprovgroupnames for more

  • Comics who’ve been reviewed by Chortle’s editor Steve Bennett might be surprised to see his name starting to appear in the comedy listings. But no, he hasn’t taken up stand-up; it’s a student from Galway who happens to have the same name. Here he is:

  • Russell Brand has reportedly bought a seven-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills for £2.2million, so he can live with girlfriend Katy Perry. Last month he also put his London flat up for sale, fuelling the rumours.

  • Not much festive cheer between stand-up Bethany Black and a punter at a gig in Newcastle this week. When the man, who had already been a little awkward, slurred something in the direction of the stage, Black said: ‘Have you had a stroke?’ His friend said: ‘That’ not funny.’ Getting up to leave, he added: ‘His dad’s just had a stroke.’ The offended punter himself was less eloquent, heckling, ‘Yeah, and you’ve got shit shoes’ as he threw a pint of lager over Black. The effect of the dramatic storming out was only slight ruined when he sheepishly returned moments later to retrieve his bag…

  • David Walliams dressed up as X-Factor’s Jedward for his Christmas card this year.

  • Ricky Gervais has been named as the man the public would most like to give the alternative Christmas Day message, ahead of Michael Caine, George Clooney and Twilight star Robert Pattinson.

  • Sandra Bernhard owns a shrunken head.

  • Merry Christmas.

SOURCES: RickyGervais.com Sunday Mirror, Sunday Mirror, ContactMusic.com, Mock The Week Too Hot For TV 2 DVD, You Tube, Daily Star, Chortle, The Sun, Sky Movies, New York magazine

Published: 24 Dec 2009

Live comedy picks

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.