WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• ‘YouTube has totally killed the anecdote. It provides anecdotes for the illiterate.’ Frank Skinner.

• The internet thinks this house on the right – Whitefriars Gatehouse in Coventry and now being sold by the City Council – looks like Alan Carr.

• The Alan Partridge episode in which the talk-show host finds himself kidnapped by a super-fan is based on a real-life incident which happened to Stewart Lee, Richard Herring has revealed. And in a peculiar twist of fate, the stalker-like character later became famous in his own right. Herring told the story to Steve Coogan this week as they spoke about writer Peter Baynham, who used to work with both Lee and Herring and Alan Partridge. At his Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, Herring revealed: 'Stewart Lee went to a gig and got locked out of his bed and breakfast. A guy who was at the gig said, "We've got a spare bed in our house, come and sleep there." So Stew said "fine" and when he got there they didn't have a spare bedroom, what they had was a mattress on the floor of the living room, and the living room had posters of Stewart Lee's shows up. And the guys flatmates were watching the porn version of Animal Farm. So Stew had to lie there with posters of himself up on the wall. And years later it turned out that the guy who had invited Stew back to his flat was the DJ Christian O'Connell.' Click here to watch the full hour-long chat.

• Speaking on tonight’s Graham Norton show, David Walliams says he received a letter from a young fan of his kids’ books saying: ‘I’m writing to you because you are my second favourite author. My favourite is JK Rowling but my teacher said she is going to be too busy to reply so I thought I would write to you instead.’

• Former stand-up Rich Brophy has turned inventor… and come up with a device he claims will cure the problem of men leaving the toilet seat up once and for all. He’s seeking nearly £20,000 on Kickstarter to get his GoBlo to market – a small light that sits under the seat, saving men the hassle of having to turn the light on to pee, and also encouraging them to return the seat to plunge the room back into darkness. He said: 'Men have, and probably always will, act in self-interest. The GloBro discreetly taps into that self-interest. It creates a subtle psychological shift in the act of putting the toilet seat down, changing perception from “I’m putting her seat down” to “I’m turning my light off”.'
Here he explains all:

• Brighton-based comic Phil Lucas has been posting spoof planning application notices around town, including demolishing the iconic Grand Hotel and replacing it with 'a large postmodernist corporate headquarters built in the shape of a bus' and turning Sussex County Cricket Ground into Alesha Dixon World. Oddest is his suggestion of a 40-metre high otter's head in the sea...

• Joe Bor might have asked the wrong question of fans an Arsenal benefit gig...

• Micky Flanagan got done up as King Louis XVI to plug his new Sky 1 travelogue Detour de France. PR stunt maybe, but it seems to have worked as Monday night’s show got an impressive audience of 517,000.

• Jerry Seinfeld says he’s on the autistic spectrum. He told NBC Nightly News: ‘Basic social engagement is really a struggle. I'm very literal. When people talk to me and they use expressions, sometimes I don't know what they're saying. But I don't see it as dysfunctional. I just think of it as an alternate mindset.’

• The Russell Brand 'Parklife' meme is, of course, brilliant. And now the modern-day Che Guevara himself has got in on the gag, tweeting: 'Blimey, Nigel Farage using Blur to have a pop - fortunately this stuff (like UKIP) has a short SHELFLIFE.'

• Dapper Laughs. Not just a sexist - he does ‘ironic’ racism too!

• Newsnight continues to fearlessly get the hard-hitting political stories others miss. This week on the programme, Girls creator Lena Dunham spoke to Jennifer Saunders about the bleak realities of filming sex scenes. 'The first sex scene I did was from behind,’ she said. 'And the make-up artist said so casually: “Do you want a Band Aid for your butthole?”'

• There’s something not quite right about this 1980s sitcom airing late at night in the States, uncredited in an infomercial slot.

It’s the brilliantly weird brainchild of a guy called Casper Kelly, and has been airing on Adult Swim at 4am.

• Tweets of the week
Craig Deeley (@craiguito): "I tried to rescue a dog but dropped him down the water-buckety hole" "You meant well"
Daniel Owen (@danieljowen): Christmas is *actually* just a pagan midwinter festival, hijacked by John Lewis. It's not really the day John Lewis was born.
Vivienne Clore (@vivienneclore): Has anyone seen a knight on an armoured horse? I've lost my charger :(

Published: 7 Nov 2014