Steve Wright’s Further Factoids

Movie star Nicole Kidman is scared of butterflies. “I jump out of planes, I could be covered in cockroaches, I do all sorts of things, but I just don’t like the feel of butterflies’ bodies,” she says.

Baboons are so clever that they can tell the difference between English and French. Zookeepers at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons, which had been transferred from a Paris zoo…Whatever next–their own reality TV show?

One in 10 Scandinavians is allegedly conceived in an Ikea bed.

The London borough of Westminster has an average of 20 pieces of chewing gum for every square metre of pavement.

And did you know that chewing gum can only be removed with

Bosses at Madame Tussauds spent £10,000 separating the models of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston when they split up. It was the first time the museum had two people’s waxworks joined together. It’s a peculiar thing but the last time I went to Madame Tussauds the manager said, “Could you keep moving, Mr Wright, we’re stocktaking.”

At the time of writing, Her Majesty The Queen has never operated a computer. This she told Bill Gates as she awarded him an honorary knighthood.

One in four people in the UK still don’t know 192, the old number for directory enquiries, has in fact been abolished.

Eccentrics section (#u88d839cb-6194-50f3-a2fd-c5eddb82a25c)

A Welshman has had a slice of ham and pineapple pizza tattooed on the back of his head. It took three hours to complete and features three types of ham, chunks of pineapple and strands of cheese dripping down his neck.

A Chinese man recently marriedhimselftoexpress his “dissatisfaction with reality”. The 39 year old, from Zhuhai city, married a life-sized foam cut-out of himself wearing a woman’s bridal dress.

A sci-fi fan has spent 30 years and £30,000 building his own flying saucer. The builder put the machine together in his garage in Michigan in the USA, using aviation books.

A graffiti artist recreated the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in a run-down building in Iowa. The man and his family spent their life savings, and his parents have taken out a second mortgage, to pay for the project.

An eccentric known as The Mole Man was banned from his home after digging a 60-foot network of tunnels beneath it. The 75 year old spent 40 years burrowing under his 20-room house, removing 100 cubic metres of earth with a spade and pulleys.

A Turkish student hoping to get into the record books gave the wrong answers to every question in a university entrance exam. The chap, from Ankara, deliberately answered all 180 questions wrong as a form of protest against the national university entrance examinations.

Two motorists who model themselves on the Blues Brothers were allowed to wear shades on their driving licence photos. Tribute singers Jake and Elwood talked DVLA bosses into bending the rules.

A British millionaire bought an entire Bulgarian coastal resort with a view to naming it after himself. He paid £3 million for the town and said locals are “quite excited” about it being renamed Alexander.

A 59-year-old man who wanted to prove he was still as strong as a horse pulled a carriage 430 miles across Hungary. He started at Zahony on the country’s eastern border, and dragged the 66-stone carriage to Szombathely on the western border in 22 days.

A teenager in India became famous for his ability to take in milk through his nose and to squirt it out of his eyes. He sucks milk up his nostrils and squirts it up to 12 feet through his tear ducts, and the feat has earned him a place in theLimca Book of Records, India’s version of theGuinness Book of World Records.

A German man took legal action against the Easter Bunny for grievous bodily harm. The party pooper, from Berlin, filed a complaint with prosecutors, accusing the bunny of causing addiction to chocolate which leads to heart attacks, obesity and strokes.

A Belgian student sold the foreheads of himself and his friends to pay for his 20th birthday party He put up their foreheads as advertising space as he had no money to buy food or drink for the bash. The online auction was won by a marketing firm in Waregem, which footed the bill for all party-goers to have the firm’s logo painted on their foreheads for the night.

We British still buy the most compact discs in the world–an average of 3.2 per year, compared to 2.8 in the USA and 2.1 in France. Although as downloading becomes more prevalent these figures will no doubt go down. Factoids will keep you posted.

The name Lego, as in the children’s toy, comes from two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. It also means “I put together” in Latin.

The average UK employee spends 14 working days a year on personal e-mails, phone calls and web browsing.

Britain’s smallest church, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, holds just one service a year. It measures 4m by 3.6m and has one pew. Tom Cruise did consider it for a wedding venue. And Ronnie Corbett’s a regular.

Only 36% of the world’s newspapers are tabloid.

The word “trivia” comes from the Latin “tri + via”, meaning three streets. In ancient Rome an information booth was situated where three streets met. And Romans of course invented the light switch, nuclear weapons, hair, throats, books, heating, Italy, carburettors, curling tongs, the London Underground, Geiger Counters, Venus, Specsavers, Troy Tempest from Stingray, feet, Ken Livingstone and hot springs. And baldness, Richard Madeley’s chest hair, BBC4, the steam iron and the pony.

Blockbusterslegend Bob Holness used to present a game show calledTake A Letter. Bet it was P please, Bob.

Britain came 37th in a list of best countries in which to live, judged on things like climate, culture, economy and freedom. Top country was France. I demand a recount.

Tom and Jerry made their debut as Jasper and Jinks in the 1940 film Puss Gets The Boot.

Half the people surveyed by the Samaritans said they’re more stressed than five years ago, with money overtaking work as the top stress factor.

As well as protecting the heart and reducing the risk of cancer, a glass of red wine also helps slow the ageing process. Give me a couple more then.

The best music video ever was Duran Duran’s “Rio”, beating Michael and Janet Jackson’s hit “Scream”. That’s according to Simon Le Bon, though.

A three-toed sloth spends 80 per cent of its time asleep. Wake up, Sloth! You’ve only got three toes, Friend!

The record for eating 38 hard-boiled eggs is 1 minute 15 seconds.

TheMahabharatais the longest poem in the world, with more than 74,000 verses and needing 18 large volumes to print it.

Scientists have located a sort of bottleneck of nerves in the brain which explains why we find it hard to do two things at once. Well, us blokes do anyway.

Celebrity section 2 (#u88d839cb-6194-50f3-a2fd-c5eddb82a25c)

Actress Billie Piper’s parents changed her given name from Lianne three weeks after registering her birth, after they decided they liked the name Billie more.

The Queenstar Dame Helen Mirren was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov. Her father was of Russian origin.

X Factor starandBritain’s Got Talentjudge Simon Cowell says that the first time he gave a criticism was at age four when he looked at his mother’s white fuzzy pillbox hat and remarked, “Mum, you look like a poodle.”

Doctor Whostar David Tennant has auditioned for Scottish police dramaTaggart16 times–but has never been given a part.

As a toddler, movie actress Penelope Cruz would re-enact TV commercials for her family’s amusement.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s middle name is Wilhelm.

Comic Relief Does Fame Academywinner Tara Palmer-Tomkinson is a trained concert pianist, and practises for 90 minutes every day. There must be a piano in Harvey Nicks, then.

According to reports, movie star and singer Jennifer Lopez can’t be expected to stoop and tie her shoe lace, so she employs an official “shoe fastener” instead.

Courtney Cox is the only member of the TV show Friends cast not to receive an Emmy nomination for her work on the show.

Celebrity Big Brotherwinner Chantelle originally applied to be in Big Brother 6. However, after some encouragement from PR guru Max Clifford, the show’s producers put her in theCelebrity Big Brotherhouse instead.

Women say an average 20,000 words a day compared to men’s 7,000.I don’t want to talk about it.

Ozzy Osbourne, in a job that would come back to haunt him in later life, was once a labourer in a slaughterhouse.