| Armando Iannucci | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 28, 1963 Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| Medium | TV, Radio, Film, Print |
| Nationality | British |
| Years active | 1980s to present |
| Spouse | Rachel Jones (since 1990) |
Armando Giovanni Iannucci ( /ɑrˈmændoʊ jəˈnuːtʃi/; born 28 November 1963) is a Scottish[1] comedian, satirist, writer, director, performer and radio producer. Born in Glasgow, he studied at Oxford University and left graduate work on a PhD about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy.
Rising quickly through BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour was transferred to television as The Day Today. A character from this series, Alan Partridge, went on to feature in a number of Iannucci's television and radio programmes including Knowing Me, Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge. In the meantime, Iannucci also fronted the satirical Armistice review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, The Armando Iannucci Shows for Channel 4.[2]
Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom The Thick of It as well as the spoof documentary Time Trumpet in 2006.[2] Winning funding from the UK Film Council, he directed a critically acclaimed feature film In the Loop featuring characters from The Thick of It in 2009. As a result of these works, he has been being described by The Daily Telegraph as "the hardman of political satire".[3] Other works during this period include a operetta libretto, Skin Deep and his radio series Charm Offensive. He is currently working on a U.S. political satire for HBO called Veep.
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Iannucci's father, also called Armando, is from Naples, Italy, and his mother is from Glasgow, Scotland, where Iannucci was born. His father, who came to Scotland in 1950, ran a pizza factory. Armando has two brothers and a sister. Iannucci was educated at St Peter's Primary School, St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow and University College, Oxford, where he read English literature gaining an MA in 1986. In his teens he thought seriously about becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He abandoned graduate work on 17th-century religious language with particular reference to Milton's Paradise Lost, to pursue his career in comedy.
After making several programmes at BBC Scotland in the early 1990s such as No' The Archie McPherson Show, he moved to BBC Radio in London, making radio shows including Armando Iannucci for BBC Radio 1, which featured a number of comedians he was to collaborate with for many years, including David Schneider, Peter Baynham, Steve Coogan and Rebecca Front.
Iannucci first received widespread fame as the producer for On the Hour on Radio 4, which soon transferred to television as The Day Today. He received critical acclaim for both his own talents as a writer and a producer, and for first bringing together such comics as Chris Morris, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Peter Baynham and Steve Coogan. The members of this group went on to work on separate projects and create a new comedy "wave" pre-New Labour: Morris went on to create Brass Eye, Blue Jam and the Chris Morris Music Show; Stewart Lee and Richard Herring created Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy.
Baynham was closely involved with both Morris's and Lee & Herring's work — simultaneously at one point. Lee would go on to co-write the controversial Jerry Springer — The Opera, but perhaps the most famous "alumnus" of this group is Steve Coogan's character Alan Partridge, who first appeared in On the Hour, and has featured in multiple spin-off series. Between 1995 and 1999, Iannucci produced and hosted The Saturday Night Armistice.
In 2000, he created two pilot episodes for Channel 4, which became The Armando Iannucci Shows. This was an eight-part series for Channel 4 broadcast in 2001, written with Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. The series consisted of Iannucci pondering pseudo-philosophical and jocular ideas and fantasies inbetween surreal sketches. Iannucci has been quoted as saying it is the comedy series he is most proud of making. He told The Metro in April 2007 "The Armando Iannucci Show [sic] on Channel 4 came out around 9/11, so it was overlooked for good reasons. People had other things on their minds. But that was the closest to me expressing my comic outlook on life."[4]
After championing Yes Minister on the BBC's Britain's Best Sitcom, Iannucci devised, directed and was chief writer of The Thick of It, a political satire-cum-farce for BBC Four. It starred Chris Langham as an incompetent cabinet minister being manipulated by a cynical Press Officer, played by Peter Capaldi and based on Tony Blair's former Press Secretary Alastair Campbell. The series was broadcast in two-parts in 2005 before an expanded cast starred in two specials and a "third" series.
Based on a format he had used in Clinton: His Struggle with Dirt in 1996 and 2004: The Stupid Version, in mid-2006, his spoof documentary series Time Trumpet was shown on BBC 2. The series looked back on past events through highly edited clips and "celebrity" interviews, looking back on the present and near-future from the year 2031. One episode, featuring fictional terrorist attacks on London and the assassination of Tony Blair, was postponed and edited in August 2006 amid the terrorism scares in British airports at that time. Jane Thynne, writing in The Independent, accused the BBC of lacking backbone.[5]
Despite his involvement in many facets of British comedy as a producer, writer and performer, Iannucci has remained relatively unknown amongst the British public. His non-television projects include Smokehammer, a web-based project with Chris Morris, a book in 1997 entitled Facts and Fancies, compiling some articles from his newspaper columns, which was turned into a BBC Radio 4 series. A little-known radio series called Scraps With Iannucci followed late in 1998, in which Iannucci used his tape-fiddling skills to present a review of the year.
He has appeared on Radio 3 talking about classical music, one of his passions and collaborated with composer David Sawer on Skin Deep, an operetta, which was premiered by Opera North on 16 January 2009. He has also presented three programmes for BBC Radio 3, including Mobiles Off!, a 20-minute segment on classical concert-going etiquette.
He directed a series of Post Office television adverts, featuring the actors John Henshaw, Rory Jennings and Di Botcher alongside guest stars such as Joan Collins, Bill Oddie and Westlife.[6]
In January 2009, his first feature film In the Loop, in the style of The Thick of It, was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was the first cinema film to be directed by Iannucci, after his contribution to Tube Tales in 1999. The film has been applauded by critics, both in Britain and the US,[7] and was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 2009.[8] The film secured the eighth highest placing in the UK box office in its opening week – despite its relatively insignificant screening numbers. According to the British Film Institute screenonline, Iannucci had previously failed to secure funding for a historical comedy film in 2003.[2]
Iannucci used his BBC press pass to enter the US State Department headquarters whilst researching the film, saying how he just turned up and claimed to be "here for the 12.30". Iannucci spent an hour inside taking photographs which were used for the film's set designs.[9]
Iannucci has won two Sony Radio Awards and three British Comedy Awards. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.[10] He was also subject of a 2006 edition of The South Bank Show.
In January 2006 he took the post of News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at the University of Oxford,[11] where he has delivered a series of four lectures under the title "British Comedy — Dead Or Alive?".
In June 2011, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow to recognise his contribution to film and television.
At the 2011 British Comedy Awards, Iannucci received the Writers' Guild of Britain Award.[12]
In 1990, he married Rachael Jones, whom he met when she designed the lighting for his one-man show at Oxford. They have two sons and one daughter and currently live in Buckinghamshire.[13]
In the 2010 general election he supported the Liberal Democrats, stating: "I'll be voting Lib Dem this election because they represent the best chance in a lifetime to make lasting and fair change to how the UK is governed."[14] Since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition of 2010 was established, however, he has expressed doubts over his continued support for the party, saying he is 'wavering' on many issues and has admitted to 'queasiness' over the Coalition's economic measures. He has expressed an interest in targeting the Liberal Democrats in the next series of The Thick Of It, just as the first three targeted what he perceived as the failings within the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.[15]
Iannucci describes Woody Allen as his "all-time comedy hero".[16]