Last Week Tonight Best Bits

In order to increase the general levels of people understanding my references, I've decided to occasionally list some things that I like - especially things I've noticed most people I speak to haven't seen - to increase the quality of your conversation with me. But mainly to celebrate people and things I like. So this time, I'm doing John Oliver. A British comedian, who never really got anywhere much over here, until Ricky Gervais recommended him to The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. After years of writing for The Daily Show and appearing as a correspondent, he guest hosted the Daily Show in Jon Stewart's absence one summer and off the back of that got his own show: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It's an extremely political show that does serious politics and comedy very well, and because it's HBO - unlike The Daily Show - there's no advert breaks allowing him enough time to delve really deeply into the issues. So here are the 15 best Last Week Tonight episodes, based on how funny they are, how important the story is, and how memorable an episode it was.

15. FIFA

The various scandals of FIFA became a recurring feature of the first two seasons of Last Week Tonight. It's the first episode that I recall getting media coverage and reaction, and also the first I remember trending, possibly because it's a story that has particular impact in the UK, because it's about football. This first clip was shown just before the 2014 FIFA world cup, and I think for many people, me certainly, it is the first time they'd realised just how completely fucking evil FIFA is. I think certainly it's the first time that I had seen so many FIFA scandals detailed in one place. It's eye opening and it's funny, but it's also done by a real football fan and that personal angle helps John Oliver to keep a perspective throughout the piece that means it's angry in all the right places ("The most deadly middle eastern construction project..." is a particularly powerful gag, that deserves a bigger laugh as a joke but brilliantly shocks the audience into silence) but still fun and not having a go.

14. And Now... Roger Ailes

The "And now this" section is a montage of clips, usually a bit fun, taken from national and local news broadcasts - local news anchors doing crap Irish banter for St. Patrick's Day, that sort of thing - and it's usually a bit of a palate cleanser, used to bridge the gap from one subject to another. But this one, which aired in 2016 after the resignation of Roger Ailes as CEO of Fox News following sexual assault allegations, uses just a few very short clips to really paint a picture of just what an awful organisation Fox News is in under two minutes.

BONUS CONTENT: The LMFAO Eulogy (from The Bugle)

When John Oliver found out that LMFAO and Right Said Fred were amongst dictator Bashar Al-Assad's favourite bands it was really funny. So you can imagine his disappointment at LMFAO splitting up.

13. Russell Crowe, the last Blockbuster in Alaska and Koalas

Last Week Tonight and John Oliver have something of a reputation when it comes to spending silly money at auctions on ridiculous stunts so when news around the world was made by the fact that someone spent $7000 on the jockstrap worn by Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man, as part of his infamous The Art of Divorce auction, a lot of people and media companies were asking "Is this John Oliver?" and of course it was. In a lovely move HBO bought a whole load of Russell Crowe's props and costumes and sent them to one of the very few remaining Blockbusters in Alaska, to make it more of a tourist attraction and keep it open.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!! Which is all a great deal of fun, but it was Russell Crowe's perfect reaction to this in a follow up piece a couple of weeks later that is really the best thing about this story when Russell used the money to open the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Clinic.

12. Coal

This next one on the list is a great example of how John Oliver can often take a very dry subject matter and spin it into 20 minutes of accessible comedy for his audience. This piece on the problems facing workers in the coal industry - who Trump spoke a lot about in his election campaign - has a lot of numbers and economics to get your head around but John does it in a pretty entertaining way. It's also the only time he has so far been - unsuccessfully - sued by the subject of one of his shows and the first time he's received a cease and desist letter and been threatened with legal action. And I think it gives you an idea of how seriously he takes the job that such a threat only spurs him on to lay into the man who threatened him further and the fact that HBO won the case gives you some idea of how well researched all the information they quote in the show is and how precisely they work for script accuracy. You can feel John watching his words when discussing Bob Murray, but still never holding back.

11. SLAPP Suits

And having been sued by Bob Murray, John followed up two years later, after finally winning the case, with a discussion about SLAPP Suits. After Bob Murray sued them claiming being described as a 'geriatric Doctor Evil' caused him more stress than anything else in his life 'an odd thing to say, given that, he oversaw a company whose mine collapse in Utah resulted in the deaths of nine people.' The response understandably has a lot of fun at Bob Murray's expense, while discussing a wider issue of using SLAPP Suits to silence opponents and how that works in a world of comedy, satire and free speech. Of course it all ends in a brilliant celebration in the form of the Eat Shit Bob musical.

Here's the full bit on SLAPP suits

And for those who don't have much time, here's the musical on it's own:

10. Campaign Songs

People who have seen Game of Thrones will know that HBO has a vast amount of money and it's likely that series 8 of the HBO show wont appear on this list, and in the last episode some annoying child you've not cared about for 8 years will take over from John Oliver at the end whether you want it or not or even if it makes no sense.

But to focus on the bit where HBO have money here, it means that they can get some brilliant and big name guests to help make points fun on the show. This episode on the Republican National Convention from the 2016 election campaign, is the first time the show really talked about Donald Trump in any depth. They'd previously ignored him thinking he wasn't to be taken seriously, and while he still isn't to be taken seriously, unfortunately we now have to take him seriously. But rather than give you another long speech on the subject of how awful Trump is, I thought I would just share the final segment of the episode in which John and a range of guests who've had their music used by election campaigns, on both sides, without their permission deliver a catchy message back.

9a. Boris Johnson & The Mating Foxes of Kent

Sometimes it's interesting to see what foreign news programs make of events in the UK, particularly when those events are as completely mental as electing Boris Johnson Prime Minister of the UK. I kind of swerved the clips talking about Donald Trump on this list, as there's little we don't already know about Trump. It's been fairly well documented. The same is true of Boris Johnson but it's interesting to watch this clip anyway. Because it's aimed at an audience who might not be fully aware of Boris Johnson and is on a show that doesn't talk about British politics every week, it's in some ways a complete guide to Boris. It follows his journey to the top of British politics, discusses his carefully constructed public image, his manipulation and his role in some of the reporting and bullshit that led us to Brexit. There's also a couple of good Last Week Tonight pieces dedicated to Brexit itself but we're bored of hearing about that for now.

9b. Brexit Anthem

Ok. Just one brief clip on Brexit because it's a catchy song from an episode before the Brexit referendum.

BONUS CONTENT: Osama Bin Laden Fuckeulogy (from the Bugle)

This clip is not from Last Week Tonight but it is John Oliver from the podcast he made with Andy Zaltzman, sadly John had to give up the podcast to focus on making the TV show. Though the podcast is still going and Andy Zaltzman is an absolutely brilliant host. This clip however is their response to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden for which John Oliver coined the term a 'fuckeulogy' which they would return to when other horrible people died.

8. Televangelists

John Oliver's televangelists episode took a subject I knew and cared very little about and blew my mind. This is not an attack on Christianity or preachers in general, but is a brilliant expose of the way in which televangelists operate and how their greed targets incredibly vulnerable people. It starts mad by showing some of the crazy televangelists on TV, then gets weirder as John Oliver explains how easy it is to set up your own church by legally turning Last Week Tonight into a church. But the absolutely insanest part of this all is the letters he received when he wrote to one of the televangelists asking to join his church.

7. Wax Presidents

A lot of this list is fairly hard hitting political stuff - and I left out the episode about family separation which they did the week of the midterm elections - so it's time for something just plain silly.

The Hall of Presidents Wax Museum shut down and auctioned off their models, and the former Daily Show cast entered into a bidding war against each other to win some. I mentioned before that Last Week Tonight has a habit of spending large amounts of money on stupid stunts, and having found out about Warren Harding's love letters in a previous series, this was irresistible and the Harding movie they made with the wax model is brilliant. Enjoy. It's no politics for once. It's just silly.

BONUS CONTENT: Gun Control Whoop-De-Do (from The Daily Show)

Before landing his own show John was a correspondent on the Daily Show where he often went to meet and interview people about the important issues of the day. It's one of the things I miss him doing on Last Week Tonight. This is a real highlight. The first of a three part series where he tackled Gun Control by meeting a member of the Virginia Citizens Defence League who are pro-guns, and it's just fun to see exactly how quickly John Oliver manages to tear apart his argument.

6. The Dalai Lama

Well I know I just posted a clip of John Oliver meeting Phillip Von Cleave of the Virginia Citizens Defence League so this might seem like it's not a big deal after that, but John Oliver does still occasionally get out of the studio to meet people, and in this clip he interviews the Dalai Lama. There's nothing more I need to say.

5. Gilbert Gottfried reads Theresa May's Brexit Proposal

This is another one where John Oliver talks about British issues. Or rather he doesn't. This is really about a very important issue to the UK, the fact that you cannot use footage from the houses of parliament in a comedy show. That's right. The likes of Have I Got News For You cannot make fun of politicians using actual clips of them in parliament, which you'd think in a democracy would be fairly fucking important. Anyway, when John Oliver discovered that the British broadcast of his show on Sky Atlantic had had sections cut out of it because they showed parliamentary footage, he ran a piece on his show about it being fucking stupid. Of course we in the UK had to enjoy this instead and I think it makes it's point pretty well.

Interesting update to this story: the law has since been changed and it is now legal for comedy shows to use footage of events in the houses of parliament.

BONUS CONTENT: Maggie Thatcher Death Catcher (from The Bugle)

Ok, this is an interesting one, particularly as a fan of a left-wing comedy and for John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman as makers of left-wing comedy. A few high-profile Fuckeulogies after the Osama Bin Laden one Margaret Thatcher died. In this clip, rather than present a fuckeulogy, John and Andy wrestle with the complicated question of whether or not Thatcher deserves one. It's a much more balanced discussion than a lot of the news or the comedy at the time showed.

4. Brett Kavanaugh

Now strangely for a show that's quite happy to put most of it's content on youtube (even against a cease and desist order as mentioned earlier) this episode isn't on there, most likely because rather than break the show down into segments like they normally do, John Oliver dedicated the whole of the episode to talking about one issue: Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court and the hearing he went through to get there once the sexual assault allegations about him emerged. It's a brilliant argument from John Oliver. The way the media and the panel tried to discredit the victim was laid bare. In one moment they even ask the victim who paid for a polygraph test on her, when she flounders the judges prepare to jump on her, only to have to have it explained to them that it's standard procedure as they well know. The whole process is exposed for being as unfair as it is. But the main moments from this story come from Kavanaugh himself. His defence is frankly mad. He cries over his dad's collection of calendars (weird in itself but also as John points out the dates don't really match), he seems to play some kind of improv game where he has to make up innocent explanations for the clearly drunk or sexual stuff he wrote about doing at college, he gets really angry at the process a few times and even turn his questions back on those questioning him as if accusing them of something. The whole thing is very weird to watch, but I think I learnt something about how to argue a case from watching John Oliver handle this story. He doesn't try to convince you that Brett Kavanaugh is guilty or innocent. That would be pointless anyway. We're all so entrenched in party lines these days that if Donald Trump set fire to a kitten the MAGA fans would say 'he's our kitten burner' or if Jeremy Corbyn was photographed writing the scripts for the last episodes of Game of Thrones, the Momentum crowd would be like "actually we wanted to be underwhelmed by the whole thing. It's better that way." Instead John Oliver makes the point that even if you think he's innocent of all the crimes he stands accused of, even if you think that, clearly his performance during the hearing makes him unsuitable for a role of this importance. It's a logical and reasoned argument. Sorry logic and reasoning are old fashioned things we apparently used to have.

3. Chiitan

Well after Margaret Thatcher and Brett Kavannagh, I think we need a palate cleanser. One of the great things Last Week Tonight occasionally does it take a local story from somewhere in the world and shine some light on it. This is the second time they've mentioned Japanese city mascots on the show, but it's also just completely joyous.

BONUS CONTENT: The first ever episode of Mock The Week

I mean, you just don't get line ups this good on Mock The Week anymore: Frankie Boyle, Hugh Dennis, Linda Smith RIP, John Oliver, Rory Bremner and Jeremy Hardy RIP. What a great line up. It's a little rough around the edges because it's only a first episode and also because it's Mock The Week, but it's a rare chance to see John Oliver on British TV so worthy of inclusion in this list. I particularly like the moment he calls out Dara O'Briain (well the writers) for making a very obvious and racist joke. The writers clearly listened to his words, took on board what he had to say about that kind of lazy comedy, and promptly never hired him again and forced him to find work in another country. Boy did we fuck up. Thanks Mock The Week.

2. The Confederacy

Time for a white English man to explain how bad the Confederacy was. This is a proper in depth look at it. At a time when there was a huge debate going on about tearing down statues of figures from the Confederacy, John Oliver pulled no punches in explaining just how bad a part of American history it was for many people. What do I mean by "pulled no punches"? Well he calls it America's Jimmy Saville and that's just the start. For those of us living outside America who are perhaps not so well aware of the history, as I wasn't fully to be honest, this is illuminating. To those who maybe thought "what's so bad? It's just a statue," this is a compelling counter argument. It's particularly interesting when John discusses one of the key problems at the heart of this kind of debate: when people today are confronted with what their ancestors may have stood for.

1. Alex Jones

The horrifically racist, pro-guns, conspiracy theorist, 9/11 was an inside job, Sandy Hook denying American right wing political commentator. Not Alex Jones from the One Show who is not American (everything else there still applies but the BBC keep her in the wrong forum to air it). In the opening episode of the season John Oliver showed a funny clip of Alex Jones ranting about "they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin' frogs gay." Rather than simply ignore it Alex Jones decided to attack John Oliver back on his own show and accused John of making him look like a loon by taking his words out of context. This turned out to be a big and predictable mistake. As John and his team spent the next few months listening to all of Alex Jones' shows and getting to know the full context. In this piece John Oliver presents the full context of the Alex Jones show. Alex Jones goes from seeming like a mad and misguided idiot to seeming actually pure evil. It's obviously personal for John, but it's a lot of fun too this one.

And finally...Here's the sequel to the story of ChiiJohn which was the season finale to the 2019 season.

Ok, and a couple more songs too.

Right Said Fred on Bashar Al-Assad

Weird Al on North Korea