Armando Giovanni Iannucci, OBE

Armando Giovanni Iannucci (; born 28 November 1963) is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer, and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series ''On the Hour'' transferred to television as '' The Day Today''. A character from this series, Alan Partridge, co-created by Iannucci, went on to feature in a number of Iannucci's television and radio programmes, including '' Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge'' and ''I'm Alan Partridge''. Iannucci also fronted the satirical '' Armistice'' review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, ''The Armando Iannucci Shows'', for Channel 4.

Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom '' The Thick of It'' and the spoof documentary '' Time Trumpet'' in 2006. Winning funding from the UK Film Council, in 2009 he directed a critically acclaimed feature film, '' In the Loop'', featuring characters from ''The Thick of It''. As a result of these works, he has been described by '' The Daily Telegraph'' as "the hardman of political satire". Other works during this period include an operetta libretto, ''Skin Deep'', and his radio series ''Charm Offensive''. Iannucci created the HBO political satire ''Veep'', and was its showrunner for four seasons from 2012 to 2015. For his work on ''Veep'' he won two Emmys in 2015, Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. He followed this with the feature films '' The Death of Stalin'' in 2017 and '' The Personal History of David Copperfield'', a 2019 adaptation of the novel '' David Copperfield''. In 2020, he created the comedy series '' Avenue 5'' on HBO.

Early life

Iannucci was born in Glasgow. His father, also called Armando, was from Naples, while his mother was born in Glasgow to an Italian family. Before emigrating, Iannucci's father wrote for an anti-fascist newspaper as a teenager and joined the Italian partisans at 17. He came to Scotland in 1950 and ran a pizza factory in Springburn in Glasgow.

Iannucci has two brothers and a sister. His childhood home was near that of actor Peter Capaldi, who went on to play Malcolm Tucker in '' The Thick of It'', a TV show created by Iannucci; although their parents knew each other well, he and Capaldi did not know each other in childhood. In his teens, Iannucci thought seriously about becoming a Roman Catholic priest.

Iannucci was educated at St Peter's Primary School, St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, the University of Glasgow and University College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He was conducting a DPhil about 17th-century religious language, with particular reference to Milton's ''Paradise Lost'', which he abandoned to follow a comedy career. He was particularly inspired by the American comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen, later calling him his "all-time comedy hero".

Career

1990s

After making several programmes at BBC Scotland in the early 1990s such as the ''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 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, Baynham and 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. Lee would go on to co-write '' Jerry Springer: The Opera'', and wrote early material for 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''.

2000s

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 in between surreal sketches. Iannucci has been quoted as saying it is the comedy series he is most proud of making. He told ''Metro'' in April 2007: "''The Armando Iannucci Show'' 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."

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, foul-mouthed Press Officer, Malcolm Tucker. It was first broadcast for two short series on BBC Four in 2005, initially with a small cast focusing on a government minister, his advisers and their party's spin-doctor. The cast was significantly expanded for two hour-long specials to coincide with Christmas and Gordon Brown's appointment as Prime Minister in 2007, which saw new characters forming the opposition party added to the cast. These characters continued when the show switched channels to BBC Two for its third series in 2009. A fourth series about a coalition government was broadcast in 2012. In a 2012 interview, Iannucci said the fourth series of the programme would probably be its last.

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.

He created the American HBO political satire television series ''Veep'', starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, set in the office of Selina Meyer, a fictional Vice-President of the United States. ''Veep'' uses a similar cinéma-vérité filming style to ''The Thick of It''. Debuting in 2012, the show has aired seven seasons, winning multiple awards including seventeen Primetime Emmy Awards. However, beginning with season five, Iannucci stepped down as showrunner due to "personal reasons".

In 2019, he began work on a new science fiction sitcom for HBO called '' Avenue 5,'' which premiered in 2020 He subsequently became the series executive producer and directed the pilot.

Other work

Iannucci's non-television works include ''Smokehammer'', a web-based project with Chris Morris, and the 1997 book ''Facts and Fancies'', composed of his newspaper columns, which was turned into a BBC Radio 4 series. The radio series ''Scraps With Iannucci'', which followed late in 1998, featured Iannucci using his tape-fiddling skills to present a review of the year.

In 2007, he directed a series of Post Office television adverts, featuring the actors John Henshaw, Rory Jennings and Di Botcher alongside guest stars Joan Collins, Bill Oddie and Westlife.

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 was a regular columnist for the classical music magazine ''Gramophone''. A book of his writings about classical music ''Hear Me Out'' was published in 2017.

In 2012 it was announced that he was writing his first novel, ''Tongue International'', a satirical fantasy about the promotion of a "for-profit language".

Film directing

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 was applauded by critics, both in Britain and the US, and was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 2009. The film secured the eighth highest placing in the UK box office in its opening week – despite its relatively insignificant screening numbers.

His second feature film was '' The Death of Stalin'', about the power struggle which followed the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. It was released in October 2017 in the United Kingdom. The film was banned in Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for allegedly mocking the countries' pasts and making fun of their leaders. However, it received a Magritte Award nomination in the category of Best Foreign Film and was a critical success.

His third feature film was an adaptation of Charles Dickens's '' David Copperfield'' entitled '' The Personal History of David Copperfield''. It was theatrically released in the United Kingdom on 24 January 2020 and received critical acclaim.

Recognition

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. He was also subject of a 2006 edition of '' The South Bank Show''.

In January 2006 he was named News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at the University of Oxford, 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.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours

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