Mark Olver (comedian)

Mark Olver is an English stand-up comedian from Bristol. He specialises as a compere and a warm-up act for television shows.

Early life

Olver was born in 1975 [1] in Bristol, where he grew up in the Brislington area.[2] His father John was a policeman[3] and his mother Philomena worked at a cinema in Bristol.[3] After graduating from university in 1996,[4] he worked as a careers adviser in prisons and young offenders' institutes.[5][6]

Career

Olver started doing stand-up in the late 1990s and quickly expanded to compering.[7] He won the Leicester Comedy Festival Best New Show award in 2011.[8] He was nominated for Best Compere at the 2015 Chortle Awards.[9] Olver performed in the live final of the BBC Radio New Comedy Award 2016 in Edinburgh.[10]

He ran Olver's Student Comedy Night at Jesters comedy club in Bristol for several years.[11] While compering a gig there in 2003, Olver slipped and fell on stage, dislocating his knee and breaking his ankle. Lying on the floor, he went on compering until paramedics arrived and carried him off stage.[12]

In 2004, Olver had his first job as a warm-up comedian for the show Kings of Comedy, recorded in Bristol and presented by Russell Brand.[3] Since then, he has been providing warm-up for numerous television shows, including 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Pointless, Deal or No Deal, Thronecast, The Last Leg, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, Taskmaster (TV series) and the chat shows hosted by Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr.[3][13][14] Between 2005 and 2016, he did warm-up on about 3,000 episodes of the game show Deal or No Deal, which was filmed in Bristol.[3]

Olver has worked teaching comedy to young offenders.[15] In December 2017, he came up with the idea for the Belly Laughs series of gigs when he realised local restaurants were having trouble getting enough guests in the month of January. January is also a slow month for comedians, so he thought of a way of combining the two as well as raising money for charity, by organising pop-up comedy gigs in restaurants each January since 2018. Guests pay an extra £10 that go directly to The Julian Trust, a Bristol charity that runs an emergency night shelter for homeless people and rough-sleepers.[3][16][17][18] In 2019, the event was expanded to Wales, Bath and Devon.[3] Belly Laughs got together with the food charity Fareshare in November 2019 for two fundraising gigs at their warehouse in St Philip's, with Olver compering and Angela Barnes and Jon Richardson headlining. The two events raised more than £5000.[19][20]

Olver was nominated for best compere at the 2023 Chortle Awards.[21]

In 2023 he hosted the pre show for the national lottery's big Eurovision welcome.

Personal life

Olver has previously shared houses with fellow comedians Russell Howard, John Robins, Jon Richardson and Wil Hodgson.[4] In 2019, he was living in the Brislington area of Bristol,[2] sharing a house with comedian Mat Ewins.[3]

References
  1. Olver, Mark (23 December 2019). "I am 44. In just over a weeks time I will have lived in SIX different decades. That feels mathematically impossible and also incredibly depressing". @markolver. Retrieved 2020-01-02.
  2. "The Local's Guide: Brislington". Visit Bristol. 12 June 2017. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  3. "RHLSTP With Richard Herring podcast: RHLSTP 245 – Mark Olver". player.fm. 1 January 2020. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  4. "5 Questions for: Mark Olver – The Kettle". www.comedykettle.co.uk.
  5. "Who do Graham Norton and Alan Carr rely on to get big laughs?". The Independent. 30 August 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  6. Jeynes, Jodie (30 August 2013). "Mark Olver: 'I'm used to prisoners and thugs'". www.portsmouth.co.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  7. Tassell, Nige (2 November 2019). "'Your ego has to be left at the door': the secret life of the understudy". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  8. "Mark Olver - stand up comedian - Just the Tonic Comedy Club". Just the Tonic.
  9. "Chortle Awards 2015 nominees announced". British Comedy Guide. 17 February 2015.
  10. "Mark Olver - NCA 2016: Live Final - Live from Edinburgh, 2016, BBC New Comedy Award - BBC Radio 4". BBC.
  11. "Rip Roar Comedy Bristol : Performers". www.riproarcomedy.co.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  12. "Stand up comic's painful 'joke'". 24 July 2003. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  13. "The warm-up men and women: Who do Graham Norton and Alan Carr rely on to get big laughs?". www.independent.co.uk.
  14. "Mark Olver is the man that makes Deal Or No Deal tick". walesonline.co.uk. 9 April 2010.
  15. "Good lives: Mark Olver, Comedian working with young offenders". The Guardian. 12 September 2006.
  16. "Belly Laughs' mouth-watering Bristol line-up". www.crumbsmag.com.
  17. "UK's best comedians set to play intimate gigs in Bristol restaurants". bristolpost.co.uk. 5 January 2018.
  18. "Belly Laughs with Bristol24/7 - latest update". Bristol 24/7. 11 December 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  19. "Comedy Gigs in the Warehouse Raise Thousands". Fareshare. 25 November 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  20. "Top comedy and delicious food, for a very good cause". Bristol 24/7. 5 November 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  21. "Vote in the 2023 Chortle Awards". Chortle.
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