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