John Oliver Recalls His ‘Lowest’ Stand-Up Show Ever on ‘Colbert’

John Oliver joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to discuss his stand-up career, which he resumed during the WGA strike to “keep paying the staff” of Last Week Tonight.

The comedian and TV host shared several stories, including one about a gig he did at the University of East Anglia in England, which he described as “the lowest it ever got for me.”

More from Rolling Stone

• Boygenius Prove They're 'Cool About It' With Intimate 'Colbert' Performance

• Late-Night Hosts Roast Republicans Over McCarthy Fiasco

• Late-Night TV Will Return Next Week After Writers Strike Ends

“The beauty with stand-up is that it’s a fundamentally humiliating job,” Oliver told Colbert. “But it’s good for the human soul.” He went on to recount the performance, which involved an opening act called Mr. Methane “whose talent was that he could fart on command.” Mr. Methane farted the British national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” into a microphone just before Oliver went on stage.

“You might be wondering: Were there two microphones available to the performers that night?” Oliver said. “No. Microphone, singular. So I went on to a stage to an audience who were just sitting down after giving him a standing ovation. And I’ll be honest, my 20 minutes of jokes about Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war didn’t go down as well as what Mr. Methane had done.”

Elsewhere on the show The Last Week Tonight host previewed his upcoming New Year’s Eve stand-up show, which will take place in Las Vegas, and how much he loves to work. “I don’t really exist in a leisure sense,” he confirmed. “There’s no down time.”

Also during his appearance, Oliver and Colbert launched some merch for their recent podcast Strike Force Five, which featured hosts Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers. “We threw off at least one good episode in 12,” Oliver confirmed of the podcast, which has since concluded along with the WGA strike.

The five hosts announced the end of Strike Force Five last week in a joint statement. “We want to thank the entire Strike Force 5 team, our wives, our special guests, and apologize to Conan O’Brien, who agreed to do the pod, but Stephen forgot to send him any possible dates,” the hosts quipped. “And then the strike ended.”

Best of Rolling Stone

• 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century

• Risky Business: Every Tom Cruise Film, Ranked – Updated

• 70 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Time

Click here to read the full article.