John Oliver's deep dive into the president of Turkmenistan gets very weird, very fast

You don’t have to look too far to know that world leaders often do some strange things — but few can compete with the bizarre quirks of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

When the president of Turkmenistan isn’t busy driving around a flaming crater to prove he isn’t dead, he also enjoys writing poems about his favourite breed of horse and setting a large number of odd Guinness World Records.

John Oliver laid it all out during Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. To give you an idea of just how strange things get, the episode culminates in Oliver presenting a record-breaking marble cake — made by the Last Week Tonight team — that depicts Berdimuhamedow falling off a horse.

“I told you things were going to get weird tonight, did I?” says Oliver. “Admit it, when I said earlier our main story concerns Turkmenistan, you did not expect the show to end 20 minutes later with me standing next to the world’s largest marble cake, depicting a guy falling off a horse. Yet here we are.”

Trust us, it all makes sense in the end.