Friday night, on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, which airs weekly on HBO, Bill Maher opened up his monologue wasting no time with jokes about Queen Elizabeth II‘s passing.
Maher, who later in the show made it clear that he actually liked the Queen, said that he thinks the reverence that the British have for the royal family is likely gone with the Queen’s passing, at least to the degree that it was for Queen Elizabeth II.
However, at the opening of his show, Maher immediately joked about the Queen’s death, saying, “Queen Elizabeth died at 96. They say her cause of death was Meghan Markle‘s podcast.”
Last week, Markle’s podcast Archetypes was removed from the No. 1 spot on Spotify’s rankings after accusations that Spotify was manipulating it’s own charts. The mini-controversy was sparked when listeners noticed that the individual episode rankings all but proved that it wasn’t the top podcast. After the accusations, Joe Rogan regained the top spot.
The Archetypes episode with Serena Williams is ranked 25 on Spotify while the recent episode with Mariah Carey is ranked 12. Many speculate that Spotify claimed Markle’s Archetypes to be their top podcast as a way to make it appear that they were justified in paying her $18 million dollars for the 3-year deal. General interest in the podcast in the UK seems to be unimpressive overall.
That wasn’t the only joke Bill Maher had. He actually started his monologue with a royal family incest joke, referring to the practice of in-breeding that many royal families had throughout history. “It’s a sad day for in-breeding,” he said.
Of course, such practices are obviously not the case anymore, but it is actually worth noting that Queen Elizabeth II married her third cousin, Prince Phillip.
Maher further joked about what Elton John’s new song should be. Though, unlike Elton John’s hits, that one fell flat. He then joked that Trump said he can bury The Queen in his golf course.
Not done with his monologue, he threw a Biden-loves-funerals joke in there but also managed to drop Matt Damon’s name when he said, “The Queen’s personal state is worth half a billion dollars. It used to be worth a billion. That’s what you get for listening to Matt Damon.”
Late last year, Matt Damon became the celebrity face of crypto by appearing in an ad where he encourages people to use crypto by saying, “Fortune favors the brave.” Since the ad debuted, crypto has dropped significantly. Digital currencies are worth a third of what they were when Bitcoin hit their high last November.
So, for our money (or crypto), the Matt Damon joke was the best one.
