British TV Removes John Oliver’s Jokes About Queen Elizabeth And Twitter Has Strong Words

The death of Queen Elizabeth on September 8 sparked strong reactions the world over, from passionate grief to formal mourning, to indifference, and even jokes. John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight, made comments of his own during his weekly series, but U.K viewers might not have heard them if they just watched the localized version of the program.

That’s because the network Sky, the U.K.’s largest pay-TV broadcaster, cut out Oliver’s comments about the queen for the local British broadcast. However, different versions are possible to see online on platforms like YouTube, and fans who knew of the jokes’ absences were not happy. Here’s what the British-born, America-residing comedian said and how the Internet reacted.

John Oliver comments on Queen Elizabeth after her death

Queen Elizabeth passed away at the age of 96, which saw Britain enter a ten-day period of mourning while her son Charles is named king, though he is not yet formally coronated yet. That gave time for the news to settle for Oliver’s Sunday late show and he made note of the topical event. “Obviously we need to start with the U.K., which is clearly still reeling from the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes,” said Oliver.

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“It is a big moment which for some reason absolutely everyone felt that they had to weigh in on,” he continued, “from [Swedish CGI dance music act] Crazy Frog, which tweeted out ‘RIP the Queen’ [and a] candle emoji – a tweet that’s impossible to read without mentally adding [Crazy Frog’s dance music] – to Dominos U.K. which posted, ‘Everyone at Domino’s joins the nation and the world in mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Our thoughts and condolences are with the Royal Family.'” Even this observation had a jest thrown in as Oliver noted that the U.S. Domino’s page had most recently tweeted, “if ur reading this it means u need pizza like to confirm.” Oliver jokingly fired back, “Get your f—ing house in order Domino’s! A LADY IS DEAD.”

Responses to an eventful time

U.K. viewers first noticed that some comments by Oliver about Queen Elizabeth might have been cut when there was an unnatural jump in the footage. “They teased us with her picture and and truly amateurish cut,” noted one viewer. For cutting Oliver’s “joke about the queen last night,” this user called the network “Cowards.” Another wanted to know, “any ideas as to why the segment covering the death of the Queen was cut from the latest episode by Sky Comedy? Was somebody upset?” Even someone who is a self-labeled monarchist assured, “I CAN TAKE A JOKE!!! @SkyUK If @iamjohnoliver wants to have an intelligent, jovial, factual opinion about our queen I wanna hear it.”

Later, Oliver had transitioned from the queen to politics, saying, “The Queen’s death is sadly not the only traumatic event that Britain has had to deal with this week because on Tuesday, Liz Truss, basically Margaret Thatcher if she were high on glue, became its new Prime Minister.” That was apparently kept in, along with a joke about the President of Chile, which opened Sunday’s episode.

Should the jokes have been kept in if the others were too?