Queen joke cut from UK broadcast of ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’
With less than a week having passed since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-ruling monarch in British history, the UK continues to be in an official period of mourning. That’s not to say everybody is mourning, to be fair: amateur and professional comedians alike are taking the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give the Queen a good jab or two now that she’s shuffled off the mortal coil.
One of those comedians who took aim at the Queen after her death was John Oliver, host of the HBO comedy news programme Last Week Tonight. Oliver opened his most recent episode by focusing on the Queen’s death: “Obviously, we have to start with the UK, which is clearly still reeling from the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes,” he joked. “It is a big moment this week and for some reason absolutely everyone felt they had to wade in on.”
Oliver then got into a few more pokes at the Queen. When discussing Prime Minister Liz Truss’ positive comments on profitable companies, Oliver joked: “The nicest thing the Queen of England ever did for anyone was die the week that woman became Prime Minister. Because for at least a week, she’s not going to be getting justifiably destroyed for answers like that.”
Oliver never took direct aim at the Queen and didn’t make light of her death during the show, but using her as the basis for some of his jokes did lead to an unexpected censorship battle. That’s because, when the episode was shown on UK TV service Sky, the jokes featuring the Queen were edited out of the broadcast.
The censoring also comes as Last Week Tonight won its seventh consecutive award for Outstanding Variety Talk Series last night at the 74th Primetime Emmys. The truncated and censored version of the episode is still available on Sky, but the company has yet to comment on why the episode was subjected to censorship in the first place.
You can check out the uncensored version of the episode containing the Queen Elizabeth II jokes on HBO Max and watch the episode’s main story concerning Law & Order down below.
