Why does everybody like olives?

Not an incredibly important question I know but it bugs me. I live in an area with a huge Greek/ Italian population. In the local supermarket they don't have a salad bar, but they do have an olive bar with, I kid you not, twenty different varieties of olives of different colours, stuffings, etc etc. The oil section of the supermarket has at least three bays of different olive oils.

I hate olives. I can taste even the smallest amount of anything olive-like in my food, even if olive oil was used to fry something.

In this I am unique, it seems, in the world. I watch Jamie Oliver prepare a meal and think, " That looks nice, I might try that," and then he pours olive oil on it, and I shudder. (I do have a theory that if his Olive oil was taken off him he would run around in circles, unable to cook, gibbering until he just collapsed in an exhausted heap of anxiety, he puts it on everything. My challenge to you, Jamie...cook a meal without even touching the bottle of olive oil, ah ah, not even as a dressing afterwards.)

I have decided that my hatred of olives in genetic. I think there is possibly not one single molecule of Mediterranean DNA in my being. I am Celtic through and through and olives, as we all know, are not known for growing well in Scotland or Cornwall.

Why does everybody love olive oil? Or is it just one of those taboos that no-one has told me about, a sort of political correctness, and you're just not allowed to admit that you can't stand them.