For quite some time I loved the trivia, that in the famous 'Biggus Dickus scene' in Life of Brian, where Michael Palin as Pontius Pilate talks about his good friend Biggus Dickus, the extras playing the guards in the scene were told, they must not laugh under any circumstance, or they would not be paid for that day.
Turns out, this trivia cannot be verified at all. It is probably false. However, while digging into this, I learned, that there is still some funny trivia in this scene:
While the guards' payment was probably never in jeopardy, and they were aware of the script, the scene still turned out so funny, that one guard could not refrain from laughing. And instead of ending the scene, because the script wanted it to go differently, Michael Palin improvised, approaching the guard and daring him to laugh while repeating the name. The guards loose it at the mentioning of the friend's wife 'Incontinentia Buttocks', which was also improvised.
While the reliable information does not corroborate the initial trivia, I still love, how the scene we know and love today was created.
I used the following sources during my research: