John Oliver

I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley – the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you’re in your Vegas years. You’ve squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you’re wheezing your way through ‘Love Me Tender’ and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you’re still the King.

Yes, it’s that special time of year where we voluntarily imbibe pumpkin spice lattes, the coffee that tastes like a candle.

Last year in L.A. county 150 out of 151 incumbents ran unopposed. And come on. They could at least go through the motions of pretending there was another candidate. Just throw a robe on a pelican and tape a gavel to his wing. Or – I’ll tell you what – you’re in L.A. Just pretend you’re considering Blake Lively for the job. Movie studios do that all the time.

Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends. They’re much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they’re in there.

Democracy is like a tambourine – not everyone can be trusted with it.’

But it’s been 114 years. It’s like for over a century, America’s computer’s been saying, An update to your country is available and we’ve been clicking Remind me later again and again and again.

You haven’t been around here long, have you.

I still like to get carried away – but passively.

I don’t even listen to music when I’m off tour.

I think we’re a band with a lot of history now so it’s nice to come up with something that doesn’t have any history at all.

I’ve had many nicknames over the years: V, Nessa, Nessy Poo, Nessy Bear and Van. Only my parents call me Van, though, and I hate it. I get embarrassed.

Personally, I would much rather live and die by my own hand. If my stuff sucks, then at least I made it suck. I didn’t allow some person, some old dude in a suit, to make it suck for me.

I used to always feel awkward around a lot of rappers. Other people came from hustling and all that. Sometimes it was harder to relate. People would look down on me for the way I dressed, because my raps weren’t really that good – it was like, ‘Just shut up and do beats.’

A lot of them also looked a little further down the line in the future than we did. We always did everything out of Level Cross (N.C.) in the backyard and we were fairly successful with the thing. Then it started being a bigger and bigger business. It started going and bringing more people in, more money, more technology, that kind of stuff. We still sat there in the backyard. By the time we got ready to do something about it, we were so far behind on our money and our engineering and all that stuff it’s just taken us a little time to get going.

In the last series, we set up a church [to expose televangelists and the ease of avoiding tax through establishing a religious organisation]. It took a lot of legal advice and months of gathering correspondence with one pastor. In terms of the UK, I’m not sure what the Inland Revenue’s position on churches is. The IRS is very much of the opinion that all churches, whatever their form, operate tax free. How would I make sense of what we achieved? We achieved nothing! We achieved $70,000 in single [donations], a four-foot wooden penis and five vials of human sperm. Although a lot of people would consider that a decent year’s work, I suppose. It’s a pretty impressive room full of tat.

I think, really, what it was was that I was raised in a very gray Britain in the 1950s. We were pummeled during the war. A lot of our cities were wrecked and smashed up and as we came out of that, we were baby boomers there; we didn’t have the candy apple red; we didn’t have the big chrome decals; we didn’t have Elvis. So what we did, we came out ferocious. We came out kicking and spitting and it was a reaction to the gray and depletion of our islands….

Most of the time you’re too busy to think about it. But every now and then you say, ‘I work at ‘Saturday Night Live ‘ and that is so cool.

I guess I was a floater, but not really. I don’t know. I didn’t get high school.

So when you get a chance to look at things and chill and relax, it makes you want it more, and that’s why I’m so happy to be back!

[To Jimmy Webb] You’re really interested in a career? Wow, I just thought you were some guy who hung out in Las Vegas with Connie Stevens.

Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it’s like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?