Stewart's resident Brit wit

Host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart. Photo / Supplied

It might be his thank-you present to America for having finally given him a Green Card. He thinks it important for everyone in the country to understand that very soon it won't be running the world like it has been recently, because a nation called China will be taking over.

And, yes, that is a very good thing.

John Oliver - "international performer on The Daily Show" (that's what it says on his answering machine) - gently explains. "As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement but it can turn out be rather pleasant." So cheer up y'all.

Why any American would listen to a Brit on this subject - especially a stand-up comedian who has only lived in the place for a little less than four years - is an open question.

He's got a nerve, this guy with the funny accent telling us we are going the same way as the British Empire. Who does he think he is?

Oliver, 32, would happily accept the criticism. He is interestingly modest about the gig he landed back in 2006 as the main sidekick (and co-writer) to Jon Stewart, the creator and anchor of The Daily Show which four days a week generates huge ratings for Comedy Central, the cable channel, by fiercely picking through the debris of the day's political doings and media coverage thereof in search of things to laugh at.

But as a former leading member of the Cambridge Footlights (vice-president, 1997-98), one-time favourite fixture of the Edinburgh Fringe and occasional contributor to shows like Mock the Week in Britain, Oliver is far from daft or unaware of the influence he can have from this most unlikely of media perches.

The premise of The Daily Show is that it is a fake news show with Oliver running about as Stewart's fake, on-the-road correspondent.

Never mind that the guests it lures in are real enough. Everyone from Pervez Musharraf to Tony Blair and Barack Obama have felt the need to drop by The Daily Show studios on the far western reaches of Manhattan at some point, even at the risk of being made to look like chumps.

In fact, it became fashionable about four years ago - just when Oliver was first landing, all wet-eared and keen, on the plane from London - for university researchers and other gurus to elevate The Daily Show to something it was never meant to be: as a source of real (as against fake) news as legitimate as, say, the nightly news broadcasts on the main networks and the babble of other non-stop news shows on American cable.

Stewart, they said, is where people went for their news.

"Bullshit," is the quick response of Oliver, who is delaying the start of his writing day for a bit to talk in The Daily Show's chair-stuffed green room (where the Blairs and Musharrafs must nervously wait before being called in front of the cameras). "It just can't be true can it? For one thing, you just have to have a workable knowledge of the news in the first place to understand our jokes. You need to understand the set-up, to understand the punchline."

So don't call him anything but a comic. "We are just a comedy show, we have no journalistic responsibilities," he remarks, pointing out the show's home, after all, is Comedy Central. "You just try to be true to your idea of what is funny and what is also interesting."

If Oliver insists he is all about comedy, that's fine. And it's sort of true. The Daily Show was his favourite American import on British television before he crossed the pond and now he has been part of it for four years - or "one cycle", as he puts it, referring to the rhythm of US presidential elections - he doesn't want to leave it.

He recently taped (over a weekend) a six-part stand-up series of his own for Comedy Central.

He has a bit part in a new NBC sitcom called Community and recently dipped his toe into Hollywood for the first time, appearing in The Love Guru. He and his Daily Show friends are also busy writing a not-very-serious book. To be called Earth, the Book - "the history of human existence on the planet all in one bullshit encyclopaedia" - it has to be finished by next month. And yet, it does not take much to get Oliver talking animatedly about the various sins of American journalism - supine, overly scared of causing offence, bowing to authority and generally lacking in the kind of "upset the applecart" instinct that is at the heart of the profession elsewhere. He concedes, albeit reluctantly, that The Daily Show, at least, is less guilty in those respects than almost any other institution on the American media landscape.

How did Oliver get the job in the first place? "They are looking for people all the time," he says. "I think Jon had asked Ricky Gervais, at least that's the only story I heard. I don't know him, but he knew what I was doing back then. I came over and pretty much started the next day."

As for getting up to speed on US politics, Oliver is candid. "I had never been to America before, but I guess I had a workable knowledge, just because that's necessary to know how the world works ... but in terms of the intricacies of how America was governed I certainly did not know a lot, so that was kind of a crash course."

He adds: "I guess I had an opinion on the Bush administration as most global human beings did."

There can't be many better places to give you a crash course on all things America - all things American politics at least - than The Daily Show. Not a surprise, of course, was what he found about Bush, Cheney and all of them. Lord, what a fun time they all must have had back then. Such easy targets, huh? Here Oliver lets out a secret. Jokes about Bush were not fun to write.

"Especially towards the end, a lot of jokes were being written really out of despair. Because things were so bad." Oliver remembers, for example, when the scandal about terrible conditions at the Walter Reed Veterans hospital was breaking. Who wants to joke about that sort of stuff?

On the flip side, the material on offer when Senator Obama got himself elected was instantly far more invigorating and it only got better as it began to dawn on everyone - presumably on Obama himself also - that the reality of governing was going to be different from the euphoria of winning votes.

"This is much more interesting and sort of mirrors what we went through in 1997 with Blair," he suggests. "We have that euphoria of thinking 'thank goodness it's all over'. You have this borderline Messianic figure who can't possibly live up to his self-induced hype. So it was fascinating to watch the first couple of months after Obama took office. There was the justified sense of that something genuinely historic had happened, but the realities and what happens next become interesting to watch. It's not that fixed after all, you can't be so passive as to think, 'oh we voted for him, so I guess everything is OK'."

Oliver, in other words, couldn't feel more at home in a country he hadn't darkened until his 28th year. What a good thing that his Green Card, allowing him to become a "resident alien", came along so easily.

Not so fast. Getting the Green Card was "tough, really tough". It finally arrived just before Christmas, occasioning much celebration here in The Daily Show studios. Until then, he had been in the US courtesy of temporary visas that had to be renewed by visiting the US consulate in London for periodic interviews. On one of those visits he looked at the woman at the counter and thought his goose was cooked.

"Ashen-faced, she said, 'Give me one reason why I should allow you to return to my country to criticise my president.' The blood ran cold all through my body. Then she said, 'I am just kidding.' It was a heart-stopping moment."

Luckily for Oliver, they have something in the Constitution here about freedom of expression. And now, Green Card in breast pocket, he is taking more advantage of it than a good many Americans - American reporters included. And plans to continue doing so for as long as he possibly can.

LOWDOWN

Who: John Oliver
What: The Daily Show on Comedy Central
When: Monday to Friday 10.30pm

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