With a book designed to wind up Mike Pence

John Oliver has topped the Amazon bestseller chart – with a children’s picture book created to troll Vice President Mike Pence

His team on Last Week Tonight released the book A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo – which imagines the Veep’s pet rabbit to be gay, and getting married.

It’s a response to Pence’s own book about his pet, Marlon Bundo’s A Day In The Life Of The Vice President, which is currently No 7.

When he launched the book on his HBO show on Sunday, Oliver urged his viewers to buy a copy as ‘selling more books than Pence will really piss him off… You’d be doing a nice thing in a really dickish way.’

Certainly Regnery Publishing, which released Pence’s book, seems annoyed. A spokesman told CNN: ‘It’s unfortunate that anyone would feel the need to ridicule an educational children’s book and turn it into something controversial and partisan.’

However, Regnery prides itself on publishing right-wing books by the likes of Ann Counter and Sarah Palin.

The Pence book features images of the VP reading the Bible while Oliver pointed out that his tour includes a stop at Focus On The Family, which promotes gay-conversion therapy.

The ‘official’ book was penned by Pence’s daughter Charlotte and illustrated by his wife Karen, while Oliver’s was written by his show staffer, Jill Twiss and illustrated by EG Keller.

A star-studded cast was also assembled for the audio book of Oliver’s version: Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons, Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Arrested Development’s Jeff Garlin, Kimmy Schmidt star Ellie Kemper, 3rd Rock From he Sun’s John Lithgow, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, and RuPaul.

Here’s Oliver launching the book, including an animated extract:

Oliver’s book is available from Amazon US, with proceeds going to the Trevor Project, which provides suicide prevention support for LGBTQI people, and Aids United.

Published: 20 Mar 2018