UK-based fans of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver were spared a 25-minute clip of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill going backwards down a waterslide, set to the theme of The Benny Hill Show.
The HBO host had dared British broadcaster Sky to cut his segment on the British monarchy, saying that he would replace it with the repetitive comedy clip if the Comcast-owned company did so.
Sky decided against the cut and viewers got to see the segment.
“To a degree that Americans may not realize the monarchy isn’t a universally beloved institution,” the Brit said last night before pointing to some Scottish and Irish football fans chanting “Lizzie’s in a box” at games.
“You can make the case that that is in bad taste. You can also make the case that it’s very funny. Two things can be true,” he said.
“Even we got into trouble when Sky TV in the UK cut a couple of fairly benign jokes that we did when she died. Who knows if the segment will even air on TV over there. Just in case they refuse, we have actually prepared an alternative show for them where this story is replaced with a 25-minute loop of [a] video of Winston Churchill going backwards down a waterslide set of Benny Hill theme so they won’t have nothing to watch,” he added.
One of those jokes, aired after Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September wasn’t even a joke.
One of the lines was that the UK “was reeling from the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes”, which Oliver noted was a fact stated with “a kind of dickish inflection.”
The segment itself, while controversial to some of the more conservative royalists, was more educational. It highlighted the challenges faced by the British Royal Family as a growing number of countries are voting to eliminate the Monarch as their head of state.
He also highlighted some of the “brutal atrocities” carried out by the British such as the crushing of the Mau Mau rebellion by the Kikuyu people of Kenya, which happened under Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and pointed out how much certain members of the family make, while not paying tax.
“They’re like a human appendix. We’ve long evolved past needing them and there’s a compelling case for their surgical removal,” he said.
He did, however, admit that he was in the minority.
The post ‘Last Week Tonight With John Oliver’: UK’s Sky Airs Monarchy Segment, Saving Viewers From 25-Minute Winston Churchill/Benny Hill Waterslide Gag appeared first on Deadline.
