Censored: imam of Dibley is banned from ITV

Have you heard the one about the Islamic comedy sketch that ITV ordered its latest star to remove? Katy Brand was the victim of humourless lawyers who instructed her to delete a harmless-sounding spoof called The Iman of Dibley.

“It was not intended to be offensive,” says the comedian, whose Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show returns on ITV2. “A new iman arrives in a sleepy parish and the comedy arrives from the misunderstandings that causes. But the lawyers said it might be culturally insensitive.”

It’s no laughing matter, argues Brand, 29, an Oxford theology graduate. “The vast majority of Muslims are able to have a laugh at themselves just like everyone else.

Why should they be excluded from comedy? It’s funny that ITV had no problem with a new sketch about a pregnant Jesus’s girlfriend who has to deal with dating the Son of God.”

Rowan Atkinson has expressed similar concerns about comedy censorship. But Brand is particularly peeved to lose her iman of Dibley. “I really liked the outfit.”

— Academics whose contributions to the journal Nature are rejected are expected to simmer in the lab, but one botanist has retaliated in style after his work on speciation in various vascular plants was returned. He informed Henry Gee, the senior Nature editor, that he would be “naming one of the very many unnamed plants . . . in your honour”. Gee was given the unflattering choice for the triffid-like shrub of Amorphophallus or Diclis.

The editor blogs that Gee chose the former “on the ground that such plants are inescapably reminiscent of the tumescent puissance of my magnificence”.

— The top people’s cabaret troupe Kit and the Widow made sport with a Dutch contingent during their show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

After enduring friendly gibes about dykes etc, the front-row party introduced themselves to the performers, postshow.

“Hello, I’m Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands,” said a distinguished, but fortunately amused, lady.

“It was a great honour to perform in her presence,” said Kit Hesketh-Harvey, of the troupe, after the colour returned to his cheeks. “But thank God I didn’t pick on her.”

— Madonna wants Cardiff to know just how much effort has gone into her Sweet and Sticky tour. After 653 hours of rehearsals the Madge circus arrives with 3,500 wardrobe elements, 250 personnel, 12 travelling trampolines, three Shu Uemura eyelash curlers, three Gypsy musicians, one masseuse. Oh, and £l million of Swarovski crystals.

The Face: Anne Hathaway

Clumsiness secured Anne Hathaway her breakthrough role in The Princess Diaries. She fell over during the audition, charming the director. On the set of Get Smart, the spy spoof which opens today, the doe-eyed actress stopped filming when she scorched her head on a prop.

Professionally, Hathaway, 25, hasn’t put a foot wrong.

After sparring with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, she shed her Urated image with Brokeback Mountain. But the devout Christian dropped out of Knocked Up because of a nude scene.

Her gilded career has been rocked by the investigation into, and arrest of, her former boyfriend, Raffaello Follieri, who is accused of swindling millions by pretending to be a Vatican hotshot.

Follia means insanity in Italian – which may be how she now regards that relationship.

Postscript

— Jared Leto, the American rocker, left last night’s Kerrang! Awards with more ammunition for his legal battle with EMI. Leto’s band, 30 Seconds from Mars, are being sued for £16 million by EMI after announcing their departure from the label. Leto thanked his loyal fans after taking the Best Single and International Act prizes at the headbangers’ ball.

— Still at Kerrang!, devil-horn gestures were raised in honour of Slipknot, the veiled US horror rockers who wore their new range of “purgatory” face masks. Guests were entertained by Torture Garden, the burlesque/fetish company, and left with a DIY tattoo goodie bag.

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