Why John Oliver was sent pornographic ephemera and other tales of 'Last Week Tonight'

NEW YORK - It's 2016, and comedian John Oliver is ready to talk about the U.S. presidential elections.

He's just not sure yet what to say.

The host of HBO's Last Week Tonight has held out against saturation coverage of a race that, from the perspective of someone raised in Britain, goes on too long, but "it's finally appropriate," he acknowledged Wednesday during a breakfast session with reporters at the network's offices.

The Peabody-winning comedy won't return for its third season until Feb. 14, but Oliver said he has no regrets about missing Iowa.

There was "no part of me that thought, 'Oh, good, it would be great to cover this massively overblown occasion,'" Oliver said, laughing.

"I think we'll try to look at the process of democracy in the United States. Sounds hilarious."

Taking things that don't actually sound hilarious - the Canadian elections, net neutrality, the scandal-ridden governing body of world soccer - and making them so is the niche the weekly Last Week Tonight carved out for itself in its first two seasons in late night.

The show made news of its own last April when Oliver went to Moscow to interview NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an interview that was nearly as much a surprise to HBO as it was to viewers.

"We couldn't tell them about it beforehand. We couldn't tell them we were going to interview him, just because there had to be very few people knowing about it. So then, we spoke to them afterwards and said, 'We did it and can we have more time for the show?' And, also, I really liked the idea of it being a surprise, because we had this section at the start of the interview where I was waiting and he wasn't going to turn up. And it was funny," Oliver said.

"So I thought it'd be great just to spring the interview on people. But that's not something I think that most networks are anxious to hear, which is 'Oh, you've got something that people would like to watch? Why not not tell them it's going to be on?' And it was amazing that they said, 'Yes, sure, we'll do that.'"

The studio audience was also asked to stay quiet for the next three hours, and "amazingly, it worked," he said.

Was he nervous, returning from Moscow with the tapes of an interview with one of the world's most famous fugitives?

"I was terrified. Yeah, because you know you're not supposed to meet fugitives," he said. "That's like basic-level parenting."

So "it was a panicky 36 hours there, and we did split the tapes between us on the way back in case one of us got stopped."

Secrecy didn't stop with Snowden. "I like the idea of the show being a surprise," said Oliver, who wouldn't discuss what stories Last Week Tonight might be tackling this season.

He seems happy, though, to be out of the religion business, after last season's efforts to show how easy it was for anyone to form a church and solicit money got "pretty ... out of hand," he said.

"We asked for money, because we could. And we said, 'If you give us money, we will give you riches in return,' which, again, is something you're allowed to say." They expected a "few envelopes, and it didn't work out that way."

Not only did the show receive $70,000 in one-dollar bills - which it donated to Doctors Without Borders - it had to hire five interns to go through boxes of donations that included paintings, cross-stitch projects, "assorted pornographic ephemera" and "five vials of human sperm," only three of which "we were fairly sure were fake."

HBO's promoting Last Week Tonight with quotes denigrating it, attributed to figures ranging from Donald Trump, who called it "very boring," to the president of Ecuador, who deemed it "more unpleasant than a diuretic."

"Laughter is the only reaction that we have an imminent stake in," Oliver said. Once the show's aired, "we're already panicking about the next one."