John Oliver is not afraid to go for the jugular and last night he made a comparison that will make even the most stoic inhale sharply.
This week on 'Last Week Tonight', John Oliver tackled the arguments around Confederate symbols in the United States still being celebrated despite the ugly history they symbolize and the way he introduced it was quite blunt.
Oliver started his segment by bringing up Jimmy Savile, a figure many in the US probably aren't familiar with, and while he didn't go into the horrifying details of Savile's atrocities, he did make a direct correlation between the response to his crimes and the response to some American's reactions to defending their Confederate history.
"Once we found out he was a monster, we decided it was not right to publicly glorify him," Oliver said. "Which brings us to our main story, the Confederacy: America's tracksuit sex offender."
Oliver's show was then committed to analysing people's attitudes to the removal of Confederate statues and the protests in Charlottesville that ended in violence before offering up some alternative representations of southern pride that involve less racism, with a special cameo from one of late night's biggest names.
