WTF: Weekly Trivia File

• When Joey Essex was asked by the Funny Women people who his favourite female comedian was, he hesitated before coming up with: 'Um, I don't actually know the person's name. Who plays Vicky Pollard?'

• Would-be MP Al Murray has been converted into a Lego-style character by the good folk at Minifigures… but can you tell who the comedian next to him is supposed to be? Answer a few blobs further down...

• He's about to narrate the extraterrestrial adventures of The Clangers – now Michael Palin has revealed that he was offered the chance to be the first space tourist; but turned it down. The veteran traveller said he was approached by Russian entrepreneurs trying to start a business offering trips to space soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but told them: 'You must be joking’. He told ABC radio in Australia” 'From what I've seen of space so far it's incredibly tedious.’

• Mario Balotelli gatecrashed Milton Jones's last tour – entirely by mistake. 'He came to my Manchester show by mistake,' the comic told the Liverpool Echo.'He turned up in the first half, and there was a kerfuffle, because obviously he comes with an entourage. And they let him because he is who he is. And he just got the wrong venue. He was supposed to be at some rapping thing down the road. He left at the interval for some reason. But I like the idea of him trying to work out, 'when's the rapper coming on?'"

• This, allegedly, is the first time that the sick Aristocrats gag has ever been told in German. And it wouldn't be unfair to say that the Berlin audience – or the MC – didn't exactly get what Sina Khani was doing…

• Pete Johansson reports this interaction with an audience member last weekend. 'Hey, where you from?' 'Ukraine. Move on from me. You don't want to accidentally cross line and end up dead.' 'OK."

• Getting Carrie Fisher to co-star in its new sitcom Catastrophe was something of a coup for Channel 4. But as star and writer Sharon Horgan explains there was a particular caveat: 'We had to book a flight in plenty of time, because her companion dog, Gary Fisher, sits with her and you can only do that on certain airlines.'

• Here are some doodles by Arthur Smith, Sean Hughes, Jessica Hynes and Jimmy Tarbuck – part of a batch of several dozen celebrity scrawls due to be sold off in an eBay auction to raise money for the Epilepsy Action charity. The sale starts on Friday February 6, which everyone knows is National Doodle Day. Browse more here.

• Rowan Atkinson has put his McLaren F1 supercar on the market for a £8million. The star bought the unique British vehicle new in 1997 for £540,000, since when its value has soared. However, it’s not always brought him luck – he’s crashed it twice, with his 2011 smash into a tree costing him £900,000 in repairs. ‘I bought it for the quality of the thinking behind it,’ he said.’Now it has become a thing of value, it is time for someone else to enjoy it.’

• Did you guess the Minifigure? It was Jimmy Carr. And the prop he's holding, that's his 'mislaid tax return.'

• Tweets of the week
Stephen Holford (@ SteveSunshines): In England we call them Cheese Strings But in France they are known as Fromage Frays
Summer Ray (@SummerRay): I was the first person to install trampolines in musician's tour buses and now everybody is jumping on the bandwagon
Rhys James (@rhysjamesy): I only joined Twitter to find people whose tweets represent the views of their employer. This is bullshit.

Published: 23 Jan 2015