John Oliver Biography

John William Oliver (born 23 April 1977) is an English comedian. He is best known for his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and as a semi-regular panelist on the satirical news show Mock The Week.

He plays a recurring character, Professor Ian Duncan, on the television series Community. He has worked extensively with Andy Zaltzman; their body of work includes hundreds of hours of satirical podcasts and radio broadcasts, including series such as Political Animal, The Department, and The Bugle.

He is a permanent resident of the United States and lives in New York City.

Early life

Oliver was born in Birmingham in the West Midlands and educated in Bedford at the Mark Rutherford School. His parents were teachers from Liverpool and Oliver is a Liverpool F.C. fan. He is a June 1998 graduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, where he read English and was Vice-President of the Cambridge Footlights for 1997"98, when the President was Richard Ayoade. He also featured in that year's revue, Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Career

Stand-up

According to Edward Helmore in The Guardian: "His style leans toward the kind that Americans like best from the British - exaggerated, full of odd accents and mannerisms, in the vein of Monty Python."

Oliver first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2001 as part of The Comedy Zone, a late-night showcase of newer acts. He performed his debut solo show in 2002 and returned in 2003. In 2004 and 2005, he collaborated with Andy Zaltzman on a double act and co-hosting Political Animal, with various acts performing political material. Jon Stewart was apparently told about Oliver by a friend, the English comic Ricky Gervais, whom Oliver did not know. After relocating to New York City for The Daily Show, Oliver began performing stand-up in small clubs around the city, later moving on to headline shows in larger venues. Oliver's first stand-up special"?entitled John Oliver: Terrifying Times"?debuted on Comedy Central on 20 April 2008 and was later released on DVD.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

John Oliver joined The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as its Senior British Correspondent in July 2006. "I've always striven to be both an entertainer and an irritant. I think that's why I feel so at home on The Daily Show," quipped Oliver in a January 2009 interview. The writers of The Daily Show won an Emmy in 2009 for "Best Comedy Writing In A Comedy or Variety Series". Oliver is scheduled to guest-host the program for a total of eight weeks in the summer of 2013 while host Jon Stewart will be taking an extended hiatus to film the movie Rosewater.

The Bugle

Since October 2007 Oliver has co-hosted The Bugle, a weekly satirical comedy podcast, with Andy Zaltzman. The 200th episode aired on 13 July 2012.

During his remarks about the death of Osama bin Laden in episode 152 of The Bugle, Oliver coined the term "fuckeulogy." Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong Il were all fuckeulogized by Oliver upon their deaths in 2011.

Other work

Oliver wrote and presented the current BBC America campaign to have viewers use closed captioning (subtitles). Shown in brief segments before shows, "The following program contains accents you would have heard a lot more if you hadn't thrown our tea into Boston Harbour," says one. "Not even British people can follow the British accent 100 percent of the time. Therefore you, like me, might want to use closed-captioning." Oliver has begun using some of these jokes in his current stand-up routine.

John Oliver was a semi-regular panellist on the first two series of Mock the Week and frequently appeared on Fighting Talk.

Oliver appeared briefly in the series Green Wing as a car salesman.

In 2008 Oliver was given his first film role, playing Dick Pants in The Love Guru.

Oliver performed various roles in the 2009 Comedy Central series Important Things with Demetri Martin.

Oliver appears in a recurring capacity on the NBC comedy Community as Dr. Ian Duncan, a psychology professor. However, he declined becoming a regular cast member of the series because he did not want to leave The Daily Show for it.

John Oliver, along with fellow The Daily Show writer Rory Albanese, signed a blind script deal with Paramount in 2009.

In 2009, Oliver made a cameo appearance as the actor Rip Torn in the music video for the Fiery Furnaces single "Even in the Rain", which is based around the story of the making of the film Easy Rider.

John Oliver hosts a stand-up series entitled John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show, which features himself and several other comedians. It premiered 8 January 2010 on Comedy Central.

Oliver voiced Vanity Smurf in The Smurfs film.

Oliver voiced Wax Sherlock Holmes on Gravity Falls in the episode "Headhunters".

Personal life

John Oliver currently lives in New York with his wife Kate Norley, an Iraq War veteran. Oliver has said that they met at the 2008 Republican National Convention where he was doing a piece for The Daily Show and Norley was campaigning with Vets for Freedom after she and other veterans hid Oliver, the other correspondents, and the camera crew from security. The two married in October 2011.

Oliver is a fan of Liverpool F.C. and the New York Mets baseball team.

Oliver's status as an immigrant placed certain constraints on what he could do in his adopted country, but also provided him with comedy material as he poked fun at the opacity and occasional absurdity of the process of attaining US citizenship. Oliver was one of the many writers on the picket lines during the Writers' Guild strike which brought The Daily Show to a halt, but he appeared on the show upon its resuming production on 7 January 2008. During a sketch, he pointed out that he is in the U.S. on a visa which requires him not to strike while the show is in production and violation of the terms of the visa would be grounds for deportation. When asked about his immigration status in early 2009, Oliver said, "It's an ongoing, and slightly unsettling, battle to be honest. I tried engraving 'Give me your tired, your poor, and your aspiring comic performers' into the base of the Statue of Liberty, but apparently that's not legally binding." In an episode of The Bugle released 31 October 2009, Oliver announced that he "finally got approved for [his] green card," noting that now he can "get arrested filming bits for The Daily Show".