One evening while he was visiting New York's legendary nightclub '21,' Robert Morley heard a rumour that Joan Crawford was dining. Morley promptly jumped to his feet and gazed around the room. Then, just as suddenly, he sat down with a stricken look on his face. "I forgot," he explained. "I've already met her."

Tony Curtis once volunteered to participate in a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend contest. "They gave me away as a prize," he recalled. "The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize... a new stove."

Early in her career, Whoopi Goldberg found work as a bricklayer and sheet-rock installer. And though she briefly worked as a stripper, Goldberg claimed never to have doffed her clothes. Why not? "People were screaming," Whoopi later recalled, "'Don't do it! Don't do it!'"

Winston Churchill was once informed by his butler that French President Charles de Gaulle wanted to speak with him on the telephone. Churchill, in the middle of eating a bowl of soup, refused to take the call. DeGaulle persisted, however, and Churchill was eventually persuaded to abandon his meal. When he returned to the table, his soup was cold but Churchill himself was simmering with rage. "Bloody de Gaulle! He had the impertinence to tell me that the French regard him as the reincarnation of Joan of Arc," he cried. "I found it necessary to remind him that we had to burn the first one!"

Chubby McLachlan

Sarah McLachlan, discussing her favourite films, once professed a curious admiration for a certain actor: "Blade Runner was when Ridley Scott was doing good things," she declared. And? "And I just had a total chubby for Harrison Ford."