John Oliver November 13, 2010

John Oliver was born and raised in England, Great Britain, in the year of punk 1977. His passport lists his occupation as 'comedian' and as we all know, passports never lie.

He has worked as a stand-up comedian around the UK entertaining and irritating audiences in equal measure for the last 7 years, and has regularly taken shows to the Edinburgh Festival.

With his friend and long time collaborator Andy Zaltzman, John wrote and starred in three series of 'The Department' for BBC Radio 4. It centered around a three man 'think tank' who each week solved one of the world's major problems. Hopefully one day it will be available on CD, but as things stand it looks like that will be the same day that you can first don ice skates and pirouette across the fiery rivers of hell. They also wrote and presented 'Political Animal' where they linked the satirical material of various stand-ups with sketches which included firing themselves out of a water canon at a crowd of protestors, contracting bird flu and getting into a gun fight with the Queen.

In the course of his career, John has received no awards worth mentioning but did receive a letter of complaint from Buckingham Palace, which is clearly a lot better.

When The Daily Show with Jon Stewart came knocking at his door, John flung it open and jumped into their arms with a relish which made all parties slightly uncomfortable. He is very pleased to be coming to ply his trade in your country, as to be honest he had all but burnt his bridges in his own.