TV

John Oliver Takes On Barnaby Joyce And Johnny Depp’s Dogs, And It Is Fucking Wonderful

In retaliation, he's going to shoot a koala in the face. "Yippee g'day, motherfuckers."

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John Oliver mentioning Australia in any way triggers the kind of rapturous nationwide response you see in small towns when Tim Bailey comes to do the weather — it’s all anyone talks about for a long time afterward. His takedown of Tony Abbott is now the stuff of legend, and his announcement that he’s coming to tour in Australia went off a few weeks ago.

Combine that level of attention with the truly wonderful spectacle last week of Barnaby Joyce threatening to kill Johnny Depp’s dogs, which inspired some incredible takes if I do say so myself, and you have yourself a rolled gold Last Week Tonight segment for the ages.

It’s extraordinarily difficult to pick out the best moment from those six beautiful minutes — for my money, it’s the sentence: “the amount of loathing and contempt he feels for that glassy-eyed Muppet donkey is incalculable.”

Oliver’s call for Australia to take back all our shitty exports like Rupert Murdoch, Russell Crowe and Vegemite is understandable, but I draw the line at “shit Australian music,” because, hold on John Oliver, Midnight Oil are fucking great. Peter Garrett’s a working man’s rock icon, ya gronk.

Incidentally, he didn’t mention Iggy Azalea in that list of things to deport from the US, but he should have. Lay off our Peter, Oliver. You bloody galah.

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