He has used soap actors to pay tribute to Syrian refugees, mocked Fifa vice-president Jack Warner and made headlines with his treatment of dry topics such as net neutrality. At the weekend, John Oliver continued to push the boundaries of current affairs reporting on his HBO show Last Week Tonight with a typically frank response to the Paris attacks.  During Sunday night’s monologue he took advantage of the US cable channel’s relaxed policy on swearing. “After the many necessary and appropriate moments of silence, I’d like to offer you a moment of premium cable profanity … it’s hardly been 48 hours but there are a few things we can say for certain.  “First, as of now, we know this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking arseholes … possibly working with other fucking arseholes, definitely working in service of an ideology of pure arseholery.  “Second, and this goes almost without saying, fuck these arseholes …  “And, third, it is important to remember, nothing about what these arseholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure and I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend.  “Nothing about what these arseholes are trying to do is going to work. France is going to endure,” he said before concluding, “So to the people of France, our thoughts are truly with you and I do not doubt there will be more to say on all of this as events unspool.”
The host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight has delivered an expletive-filled defence of French values in the face of the ‘bankrupt ideology’ of the terrorists