From On The Hour to Veep, legendary show runner Armando Iannucci shares his influences with the Royal Television Society at a sold-out event in Westminster.
Armando Iannucci, creator of some of the most edgy TV humour of the last 25 years, revealed how he had become steeped in the craft of comedy from an early age.
At a packed RTS event, the multi-award winning writer, performer, producer and director recalled an extraordinarily eclectic career in entertainment.
It had taken him from humble beginnings in Glasgow to Hollywood via Oxford and the BBC.
En route he had helped forge such comic monsters as Alan Partridge and Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed new Labour spin doctor played with manic intensity by Peter Capaldi in BBC2’s The Thick Of It.
Iannucci, the first of his Italian Scottish family to attend university, grew up watching mainstream TV comedy giants like Morecambe and Wise.
As a “bookish” child and adolescent he was hooked on the radio and listened avidly to the Radio 4 sketch show, The Burkiss Way.
Hopeless at sport Iannucci gained kudos with his peer group by doing impressions of teachers.
Oxford was a revelation – in more ways than one.
“I thought I was very clever and then I arrived at Oxford and realised I wasn’t,” he said.
Staying on as a post graduate at university he appeared in two revues at the Edinburgh fringe.
By then he had acquired a taste for more dangerous, surreal and eccentric humourists like Spike Milligan and Ivor Cutler.
Critics like to see a lot of Iannucci’s work as satire. He explained to Lumsden that his comedy is more complex than that.
“I’ve never really seen myself as being political but I’ve always been fascinated by politics,” he suggested.
“I’ve never seen myself as a political comedian…You could sort of call it satire but it’s not really.”
BBC Radio was where Iannucci got his comedy mojo purring,
“I was about 25 when I joined the BBC as a radio producer,” he remembered.
He worked on shows like Radio 4’s Just A Minute and, crucially, Week Ending, the much-lamented sketch show that lampooned politicians and their peccadillos.
Week Ending ran from 1970 to 1998 and was regarded as a training ground for a generation of important comedy talent like John Lloyd and Jimmy Mulville.
The editorial freedom that existed at the BBC then was a far cry from the compliance culture of today.
“We went in and did it and it went out that way,” Iannucci said.
Out of this creative pressure cooker was born news satire, On The Hour, where Iannucci worked alongside the likes of Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber, David Schneider and Rebecca Front.
Today he still works regularly with Coogan and Front.
“We immediately hit if off….It was a disparate group of people who jelled…
“It was not an Oxbridge clique…On The Hour felt different. We wanted to do a comedy show that didn’t sound like any other comedy show.”
It was here that Alan Partridge was invented - initially as a gauche sports reporter.
“We based him on the kind of person who is slightly despised by James Naughtie on Today,” he told Lumsden.
“He’s not David Coleman or John Motson…It’s almost like Alan emerged fully formed.”
On The Hour’s success gave Iannucci the confidence to go freelance and enter the very different and more demanding world of television.
The Day Today, another news spoof, represented the comedian’s first experience of TV.
The show was made by Talkback and broadcast by BBC2.
He remembered how executive producer Peter Fincham, who went on to run Talkback and is now ITV’s director of television, was an important mentor.
“Peter understood what we were trying to do,” said Iannucci. “He realised that the best thing to do was to leave us alone.”
Several other daring BBC shows followed in the wake of The Day Today.
There was Time Trumpet and Friday Night Armistice, both aired by BBC2.
The then BBC2 controller, Michael Jackson, gave Iannucci the run of his election night schedule to present Election Night Armistice on the eve of Tony Blair’s success.
The show ran for more than three hours.
The Thick of It started life as a reinvention of Yes, Minister but ending up breaking new ground – perhaps partly because it was made on a shoe string.
Not having a big production budget forced all concerned to work with unusual intensity.
An American version of The Thick Of It made for ABC was a dispiriting experience for Iannucci.
“There was no swearing…It wasn’t bad, it was boring,” he opined.
Working with HBO on Veep – shown by Sky Atlantic – proved to Iannucci there is another side to US TV.
The experience reminded Iannucci of being at the BBC a decade or so ago. “HBO allowed us to just get on with it,” he said.
Not that British TV needs to be in awe of the cream of what is produced across the Atlantic.
“The British TV industry is world class. The best can compete with anyone,” said Iannucci.
Armando Iannucci in Conversation with Lucy Lumsden was held at the Telford Theatre, Westminster on 25 March. The producers were Sally Doganis and Terry Marsh. A full report of the event will appear in the April edition of Television
Words by Steve Clarke
Film by Rebecca Stewart