John Oliver's net worth comes mostly from his $8 million annual earnings as the host of Last Week Tonight. In addition to the attention he garners from his television show, he is very popular on social media. He has about three million followers on Facebook and over five million followers on Twitter.

He won six Emmys and two Peabody Awards for his work on Last Week Tonight. Oliver’s satirical political commentary has been so influential on American culture that this phenomenon was given the name of the “John Oliver Effect.”

In 2015, Time listed Oliver as one to the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He was lauded for encouraging positive societal change with his unique support of women studying to become engineers.

John Oliver's net worth is $35 million, which is a bit paltry if you ask me. John Oliver's net worth does not match the highest net worth actor or even the rich comedian’s net worth. If he owned a dozen fried chicken restaurant franchises, he would probably be worth more.

John Oliver’s Early Career

Oliver’s comedic career developed in a very British and refined way. He attended Christ’s College in Cambridge, England. While there, he joined the prestigious drama club called Cambridge Footlights and became elected to the position of vice president of the club. This was his first mixture of comedy with politics.

Oliver’s debut performance of stand-up comedy was in 2001 on The Comedy Zone at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. About a year later, he became a player in the BBC 3 comedy television series called The State We’re In. This led to a gig as the British correspondent for John Stewart’s American television show called The Daily Show. He appeared on that show with special reports from 2006 to 2013.

During the summer of 2013, he hosted The Daily Show when Stewart took some time off. The viewers liked him even more than Stewart. Based on his performance as a fill-in host for the eight-weeks during summer, HBO gave him his own show and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was born. The first Last Week Tonight show aired on April 27, 2014.

John Oliver, Author

John Oliver’s net worth got a slight boost from his share of the proceeds from the sale of the book entitled, Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race. This was a John Stewart project published in 2010. Oliver was one of many contributors. The book spent ten weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Last Week Tonight

Like Bill Mayer, who became one of the richest comedians through political commentary, John Oliver’s net worth and popularity come from the same phenomena with a touch of special Oliver style thrown in for good measure. Rather than simply taking on the politics of the moment, Oliver tackles serious issues in a format that is a hybrid of comedy and investigative journalism.

Oliver does things that others might fear to try, like going to Russia to interview Edward Snowden, which he makes both serious and funny. He also creates unique stories with amazing cultural insights. For example, he goes to Japan to see how a mascot that is a version of himself, called Chiijohn, which he created for a town named Susaki is doing. This is not the usual, host-at-a-desk and guest-on-a-chair, chit chat that is the standard for other late-night comedy talk shows.

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The John Oliver Effect

The John Oliver Effect is the name given to Oliver’s ability to sway public opinion and sometimes effect changes in governmental policy. Here are a few examples of the John Oliver Effect:

Net Neutrality

Oliver took on the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) as it was deciding on the government policy towards net neutrality. Net neutrality is the concept that makes all Internet-based content and websites have an equal chance of being viewed. Major Internet service providers wanted to make the Internet a type of toll system, where corporations could pay more to have their content treated with priority and their websites be seen more than others who did not pay as much.

The argument for net neutrality is that smaller websites and non-profits could not afford to pay the same fees as the huge corporations so that their messages would have less chance to be seen by viewers.

Oliver’s show on net neutrality engaged the public interest so much that millions complained to the FCC and crashed the FCC’s website with consumer complaints. This led to a positive outcome with the regulations when on February 26, 2015, the FCC ruled in favor of net neutrality.

Miss America’s Missing Scholarships

An expose’ conducted by Oliver and his team uncovered the incredible overstatement that the main purpose of the Miss American beauty pageant was to be "the world's largest provider of scholarships for women." In 2012, of the estimated $45 million in annual revenues that the beauty pageant earned on a national level, only $484,000 was given in scholarships.

His show’s viewers supported the Society of Women’s Engineers (SWE) with contributions of scholarship funds after he promoted the SWE in this piece about the Miss America beauty pageant.

Marlon Bundo

Marlon Bundo is the rabbit that is the pet of the ex-Vice President Pence. Pence’s daughter, Charlotte, published a children’s book called “Marlon Bundo’s — A Day in the Life of the Vice President” that told the story from the bunny’s point of view.

Oliver’s team created a pro-gay version of the children’s book, called “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo,” where Marlon is bunny who falls in love with another gay male bunny in the story. Oliver’s book published at the same time with all the profits donated to The Trevor Project and AIDS United.

Oliver’s Bundo book outsold the Pence book by a landslide. It sold over 180,000 copies within two days.

John Oliver Cancels $15 Million in Hospital Debts

In one report on the show, Oliver discovered that hospitals sell their uncollectible bills for pennies on the dollar. He was able to buy up $15 million in unpaid hospital bills for $60,000 of his own money. Then, he announced on the show that the bills had been forgiven relieving about 9,000 people of the worries of having to deal with collection agencies about these bills for the rest of their lives.

Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption

To demonstrate how easy it is to set up a church as a tax-exempt organization, Oliver’s team created the church called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption. It was a legally-registered church. During the one month that it was operating before it was dissolved by Oliver, viewers of Oliver's television show send in about $70,000 as donations, knowing that they would be given to the charity organization Doctors Without Borders.

To get in on the joke, viewers also sent in packages of seeds for the “seed-faith ” message of the parody ads requesting money donations. One enthusiastic viewer sent in a four-foot-tall statue of a carved wooden penis.

John Oliver’s Film Career

John Oliver has the distinction of being in the worst Michael Myers’ film ever made called The Love Guru. Oliver played the character called Dick Pants. Myers had many major hits with his Austin Powers series and other films, but when Oliver was in one of the Myers’ films, it flopped.

Films that John Oliver did NOT appear in include the biggest box office successes of all time such as Titanic, Avatar, Terminator or any of the other smash hits by Producer/Director James Cameron. John Oliver explains the cause of this problem is that as a film actor, he sucks.

Well, Oliver’s voice is really cool, and he did do very well with voice-overs as Vanity Smurf in The Smurfs films, the porcupine Steve in Wonder Park, and the hornbill Zazu in Disney’s remake of The Lion King.

James Cameron, if you are listening, you can use Oliver for your next Avatar project and make him the voice of a cool avatar. In that way, you do not have to show his goofy-looking face and can still benefit from his smooth-as-silk voice.

Getting a Green Card

Oliver’s journey to get permanent residency status in the United States was the source of many comedic reports on the process and how challenging it was. When he first came to America, he was allowed to work on a visitor’s visa of the kind issued to international celebrities.

When he asked the embassy staff in London for a permanent work visa, the immigration officer said that they did not want to let him back into the country to insult America. The officer said this in a serious way that startled Oliver, but it turned out the officer was just joking with him.

Oliver was finally able to get a green card in 2008 and now he can use his marriage to an American to become a U.S. citizen if he wants to do so. Oliver still has trouble with his personal status. On his show, he refers to Americans both as “us” or “you” depending on the context of his commentary.

John Oliver’s Hot Wife

Ok, so the geek Oliver may not be the richest comedian in the world, but he does have a very hot-looking wife, Kate Norley. This just proves the old adage; if you want to capture a good-looking woman for a wife and you are not that handsome, then, at least be funny and rich.

The two met at the 2008 Republican National Convention when Oliver was doing a piece for The Daily Show and Norley was attending the convention as a veterans’ advocate. Norley intervened to stop the security officers from throwing him out of the convention space for unauthorized filming by hiding Oliver and his camera crew from security.

Besides being a babelicious, she also served in the U.S. Army as a paramedic during the Iraqi War. So, if Oliver gets an “ouchie,” she can take care of him. As a veteran, Norley volunteers to work for the political action group Vets for Freedom and helps other non-profits with global disaster relief, so she is attractive both inside and out. The happily-married couple has two sons and lives with them in New York.

Trumped

In 2016, Oliver’s segment on Donald Trump had more than 85 million viewers. Oliver was one of the first comedians to take a stance against Trump on a routine basis. His ongoing stick of “We Got Him!” with patriotic fanfare was used in the beginning to take note of Trump’s lying.

Since then, Trump’s lies have been so excessive that the “We Got Him!” joke turned into repetitive false alarms that Oliver hilariously stops while in progress, saying “Not just yet.”

John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight’s Eclectic Collection

Perhaps one reason that John Oliver’s net worth is not higher is that he has no idea of what anything is worth and what is valuable. He somehow persuaded his show to buy strange things like a group of wax presidents from an auction of a bankrupt wax museum. They bought wax versions of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Warren G. Harding for many thousands of dollars.

The Jockstrap Caper

Oliver also got the show to bid on the leather jockstrap of Russell Crowe that Crowe wore in the Cinderella Man movie as part of his costume. The jockstrap was auctioned off when Crowe was selling all his stuff to pay his divorce settlement with his ex-wife.

Oliver won the bid with $7,000 paid for the item. When he got the jockstrap, he donated it to one of the last remaining open Blockbuster stores in Alaska. When the store closed, the jockstrap was presumed lost.

In 2018, not willing to let a good joke lie, he engaged the help of Armie Hammer to retrieve the jockstrap by an elaborate fake heist reported in the Hollywood Reporter. He gave it back to Crowe. Crowe said he would be able to thank Oliver for his help by making a donation to an animal rights group that he said he was considering calling the Koala Chlamydia Foundation (a joke that does not exist).

Conclusion

John Oliver's net worth is really not that much considering that he once held Russell Crowe’s jockstrap in such high regard. The $8 million a year that he earns from NBC is nothing compared to the other late-night talk show hosts. Maybe like a Miss America contestant, he was promised a college scholarship. If so, he does not need one as he already graduated from college in Cambridge. Hopefully, when his contract comes up for renewal, he will get a well-deserved pay increase from NBC or maybe he will use The Oliver Effect on them.

We can see that good humor can be charged well. But, it must be mixed with a good sense for business. Money management skills come next.

John Oliver's Net Worth Last Week Tonight