British comedian and let’s face it genius John Oliver wrapped up his whirlwind stand-up tour of Australia last night with a performance at Sydney’s State Theatre.
But after ninety LOL-packed minutes spent making the crowd kack themselves with tales about his various encounters with “comfortably racist” Australians, over-confident pigeons and the flopping dongs of Liverpool FC, the tables turned on the funnyman during the encore.
When Oliver returned to the stage to engage fans in a bit of light bantz, it was Sydney’s turn to send him into a fit of hysterics, catching him off-guard with a surprise – uh – mouthful of truth about our Prime Minister.
After the comedian opened up the floor for questions, one legendary crowd member inquired: “Did you see Tony Abbott eating an onion?”
Oliver was initially confused by the question. Then, as comprehension struck him: “Wait, what? He ate a RAW ONION?” his hand flew into a face-palm and the comedian lost. his. shit.
Oliver, you see, as a savvy political commentator, is very much up to speed on all things Tony Abbott. In fact, our illustrious PM served as a consistently hilarious punchline for the Last Week Tonight host’s jokes throughout the course of the evening, from how he might deal with, say, a moral panic surrounding the potential threat of mermaids, to his election being the possible result of a drunk-voting epidemic, to his similarities with current US presidential candidate Donald Trump (“See, we’re more than happy to let the clowns participate but we don’t ACTUALLY VOTE THEM IN”).
But, apparently, the onion-eating incident had managed to slip under the comedian’s radar. Until now, that is.
As Oliver clung to his mic stand in a bid to keep from falling over due to seismic waves of laughter, the exchange suddenly became a conversation between the funnyman and the entire Sydney auditorium who, as if as one, went on to inform him that the incident had in fact happened not once, but twice.
“Why did he eat the second one?!” The host spat Britishly between giggle-fits. “Does he lack object permanence? ‘Oh, that one also looks like an onion, I wonder if it is one?'”
And as if Oliver’s mind wasn’t already blown enough, a crowd member then googled footage of Abbott crunching down on that fateful Tassie onion, which basically had the comedian rolling around on the floor.
“It’s still got it’s SKIN ON?!” He exclaimed in sheer disbelief, with his face now stuck in a mischievous, child-like grin. “The man needs constant supervision!”
The shared triumph of bringing such joyous enlightenment to a genius comedian like John Oliver had basically every punter in the near-sold-out Sydney auditorium leaving that night with a sense of collective pride.
We look forward to seeing whether Abbott’s infamous onion-chomping gets a mention on any upcoming episodes of Last Week Tonight.
