Armando Iannucci

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
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