Comic could not believe hometown theme park plan

Talk show host and comedian John Oliver said he could not believe the news that Universal Studios was planning to build a theme park near his home town.

The presenter, who grew up in Bedford, joked on US talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers about plans to open Europe's first Universal theme park in rural Bedfordshire, an hour north of London.

"Apparently they're doing it in an old abandoned brickworks, which already seems like a bold choice," he said.

"Now they're going to build a Universal Studios there, which feels like not the worst decision that NBC Universal has ever made, but it's definitely the funniest."

He told Myers: "I was looking at all of their renderings and thinking, 'This is spectacular'.

"But you might be promising Universal Studios and instead you have a Paddington [Bear] chain-smoking outside."

Oliver, who went to Mark Rutherford School in Bedford, holds British and US citizenship and has forged a glittering career in American TV satire.

His first screen appearance dates back to his childhood in Bedford, filmed right by the Universal Studios site.

"I've been to those brickworks. As a kid, I was in an adaptation of a Dickensian drama, and I played a Victorian orphan," he said.

"And it was in those brickworks, because they still have the kind of air of sadness about them.

"At one point they were, I believe, the largest brickworks in the world."

Oliver had appeared in the 1985 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House.

"There'll be a Bleak House ride", joked Myers, before asking Oliver: "Are you worried about the staffing for this theme park, based on the local scene?"

Oliver joked: "Yeah, I'm definitely worried. I would not want the people that I grew up with pretending to be Elsa [from Frozen]. But who would they have? Minions?

"Yeah, we could do Minions. There's a quiet violence about them, isn't there? We can do that."

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