Mark Olver

Olver was born in 1975 in Bristol, where he grew up in the Brislington area. His father John was a policeman and his mother Philomena worked at a cinema in Bristol. After graduating from university in 1996, he worked as a careers adviser in prisons and young offenders' institutes. Olver started doing stand-up in the late 1990s and quickly expanded to compering. He won the Leicester Comedy Festival Best New Show award in 2011. He was nominated for Best Compere at the 2015 Chortle Awards. Olver performed in the live final of the BBC Radio New Comedy Award 2016 in Edinburgh. He ran Olver's Student Comedy Night at Jesters comedy club in Bristol for several years. 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. 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. Since then, he has been providing warm-ups for numerous television shows, including 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Pointless, Deal or No Deal, Thronecast, The Last Leg, Alan Davies: ...