Biography

Had a koala chlamydia clinic in Australia (donated by Russell Crowe) named after him.

Oliver met his wife, Kate Norley, when he was covering the 2008 Republican Convention for The Daily Show (1996). Norley, an Army veteran who served as a medic in the Iraq War, was there with a group called Vets for Freedom.

Attributes his success in the US to fellow Brit Ricky Gervais who "blindly" recommended him to Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show (1996), where Oliver served a seven-year tenure before landing his own show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014).

Graduated from Cambridge University

On his father's side, John is the great-great-grandson of The Rev. William Boyd Carpenter (1841-1918), who was a court chaplain to Queen Victoria and the Bishop of Ripon. He was from a prominent family that produced many Church of England clergy.

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had. The only way I may be able to say thank you is to invite him on a television show, where we're both one step removed from having to directly deal with each other on a human level. Hillary Kun, the guest booker [on The Daily Show (1996)], and I have been talking about who might be interesting to have come on and trying to get a balance of people. And trying to get the Queen.

[on taking over The Daily Show (1996) for Jon Stewart] I'll do anything for him, whether it's hosting this show or disposing of a body. I guess I was just happy it was the first of those two choices, and I wasn't taking a trip to the East River under the cover of darkness. On the phone with him, I was saying, I'll do it. It was only upon hanging up that my legs started to buckle. I thought, What have I just agreed to? But it was long enough away that it didn't really seem real.

[on what he's learned from Jon Stewart] In terms of how he's able to oversee the writing and the production of what the script needs every day, that has been interesting. What he's always told us is you want to make sure that the spine of the argument is in shape. You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job. It's harder to shift the point of view of a headline later in the day. That's the kind of thing you need to keep an eye on early. You'd think you'd come in early in the day and go, "What jokes should we tell?" And that's not always the case.

Australia is a sensational place and it really begs the question: why the f-- did we make that our penal colony when it's nicer than where we live? We should have said to criminals at the time "You're all staying here, we're off to go live in paradise."

Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I've ever been in. They've really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper. You can say what you like about Australian racism, it is undeniably specific. I had a couple of Australians - more than one - complain to me about all the Lebbos in the country, referring apparently to the Lebanese. Who the fuck is annoyed by Lebanese people? In a way you have to admire the attention to detail. Not just all those Arabs, but the Lebanese.