WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘Comedians are the most normal, together people I know.’ Josh Widdicombe.

• Omid Djalili’s World Cup anthem England's Going Out (To Do It Again) leapt an impressive 27,000 chart places after his celebrity chums launched a ‘thunderclap’ to spread the word on social media. The likes of Eddie Izzard, John Bishop, Jack Whitehall and Bill Bailey sent out a coordinated tweet urging their collective 15.5million followers to buy the record an hour before the England vs Costa Rica match on Tuesday… possibly the first time a World Cup song has been promoted only after the England team crashed out of the competition. ‘It’s the ironic hit of the summer,’ Djalili told Chortle ‘There’s nothing funnier than the comedy fraternity trying to cheer up the nation AFTER we are eliminated.’ He added that they held back on pushing the song earlier out of respect for Rik Mayall, whose 2010 anthem Noble England was pushed to No 7 in the charts. The thunderclap boosted the song’s chart position on Amazon’s download chart from somewhere in the 27,000s to 300 – even if the bump was short-lived, as the track is currently back down to No 4,624. The song – in aid of the Bobby Moore Fund for bowel cancer – was remarkably prophetic, though, since it contains the line about Luis Suaraz: ‘He’ll shoot he'll score, he'll eat your arm and more…’

• A Welsh comedy club has its own official beer – possibly the first of its kind. Neath Ales has launched Clown’s Pocket, a 4.5 per cent beer, in tribute to the club of the same name, which has been running in Neath since 2009. It was unveiled by promoter Paul James, along with his dad, Noel James, and fellow comic Nick Revell at a gig last night.

• Dom Joly bought a biplane once, admitting it ‘was a bit weird as I don’t fly’.

• Part of West 121st Street in New York is to be renamed George Carlin Way in honour of the late comedian… but it’s actually one block away from where the late comedian was bought up, following objections from Corpus Cristi church, which did not want to find itself on a street named after such a blasphemer. City councillors agreed the name change last night after a compromise was reached.

• Phill Jupitus was named after Prince Philip.

• Some sort of glitch seems to have hit the Amazon page for Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake, which now describes it a motivational teaching aid. ‘For successful classroom teaching, your students need to be engaged and active learners,’ the blurb in comprehensively gushes. ‘In this book, there is practical advice that is grounded in the realities of teaching in today's classrooms on how to be an inspirational teacher and produce highly motivated students.’

• An awkward 12-year-old comic called Josh Orlian told dirty jokes on America’s Got Talent last week. He got through – but his Orthodox Jewish school weren’t too impressed ‘The message conveyed by such a performance was entirely contrary to the Modern Orthodox values taught and lived at Westchester Day School,’ head teacher Rabbi Joshua Lookstein, wrote in an email sent to parents. ‘The student and the family have committed to never repeating this kind of comic performance in the future.’ Which might give him a dilemma in the next round.

• The church hall in next Monday’s episode of BBC Three sitcom Badults is attached to the parish of ‘St Robin Of Ince’ – a comedy in-joke that creators Pappy’s admit is ‘super-niche’.

• The Wimbledon Guardian this week carried the story of a local man who hosts a chat show in his garden shed, interviewing UKIP politicians and World Cup pundits. What they failed to notice, though, is that the entire thing is a spoof from internet comics Cassetteboy. Mike, from the anonymous group told us: ‘I’m assuming they haven't watched any of the videos, otherwise surely they would have noticed that all the guests are played by one person, Tony MacMurray. Or maybe the gene pool in Beckenham is so limited everyone does look exactly the same.’

• Tweets of the week
Adam Hills (@adamhillscomedy): No matter how much pushing went on, I've never done what Suarez did. I guess what I'm trying to say is - I'm a shover not a biter.
Jason (@NickMotown): Some of the methods they use to catch drunk drivers are breathtaking.
Glenn Moore (@TheNewsAtGlenn): If there's one thing the Japanese flag's taught me, it's tha

Published: 27 Jun 2014