Oliver said this during a roundtable discussion on metaphysics with Daniel Dennet, Steve Gould, Rupert Sheldrake, Freeman Dyson, and Stephen Toulmin from 1993.
It's a fascinating discussion with a lot of my favourite mid-late 20th century thinkers. It's up on youtube, lookup any of the names involved with "roundtable discussion". It's over 3 hours long though.
Anyway, Oliver was talking about what kind of mind he imagined various animals having. And that was most of what he had to say on octopuses.
It's a bit of a sad watch too because all the participants except Dennet and Sheldrake are dead now.
I thought this quote was about the octopus that correctly predicted the outcome of games in a FIFA world cup. But seems it was something else?