Armando Iannucci is a comic writer, performer, presenter, director and producer. He wrote and produced On The Hour Knowing Me, Knowing You and The Day Today, and wrote and directed the hugely successful I’m Alan Partridge. More recently he has been responsible for writing and directing the award winning BBC political satire ‘The Thick Of It‘.
He wrote and presented the Friday and Saturday Night Armistice shows on BBC2, The Armando Iannucci Shows on Channel 4, and Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive on BBC Radio 4.
Armando gained his degree at University College, Oxford, and began his career working for BBC Radio Scotland before moving to BBC Radio 1 as a producer on shows such as The Mary Whitehouse Experience in the eighties. He has been a key figure in British radio and television comedy throughout the nineties and to the present day. Armando has won two Sony Radio Awards and three British Comedy Awards. One of them was a special award for his contribution to television comedy. He and Chris Morris were jointly awarded a 1992 Writers’ Guild award for On the Hour.
Armando has been involved in the numerous British radio and television programmes, including On The Hour (BBC Radio 4, as creator, co-writer, and producer) No’ The Archie McPherson Show (BBC Radio Scotland, as presenter, writer, and producer) Armando Iannucci (BBC Radio 1, as writer, presenter, and producer) The News Quiz (BBC Radio 4, as producer, also appeared as guest) Quote Unquote (BBC Radio 4, as producer) Loose Talk (BBC Radio 1, as producer) The Mary Whitehouse Experience (BBC2, as producer) The Day Today (BBC2, as creator, co-writer, and producer, plus occasional appearances) Saturday Night Armistice, later The Friday Night Armistice (BBC2, as writer, producer, and presenter) Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge (BBC Radio 4 and BBC2, as co-writer, producer, and creator) I’m Alan Partridge (BBC2, as co-writer, producer, and director).
Others were The Armando Iannucci Shows (Channel 4, as writer, performer, director and producer) Clinton His Struggle with Dirt (BBC2, as writer and director) Gash (Channel 4, as writer and presenter) Have I Got News For You (BBC2, as a panellist) The 99p Challenge (BBC Radio 4, as a regular panellist) Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive (BBC Radio 4, as writer and presenter) The Thick of It (BBC3, as writer) and 2004 The Stupid Version (BBC3, as presenter, co-writer, and producer).
In January 2006, Armando Iannucci was appointed as Oxford University’s next News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media.
‘In The Thick Of It’ has received numerous awards, particularly from BAFTA. Series 1 won both ‘Best Situation Comedy’ and Chris Langham won ‘Best Comedy Performance – male’ at the 2006 BAFTA Television Awards, with Peter Capaldi being nominated for the same award in 2006 and 2008. Peter also won the BAFTA at the 2010 awards, with Rebecca Front winning ‘Best Comedy Performance – female’. The series was also declared the ‘Best Situation Comedy’. The series also won Best Situation Comedy from the Royal Television Society in 2006 and 2010, and won Broadcasting Press Guild Awards in 2006 and 2010 for best sitcom and writing team.
2009 saw a film version released called ‘In The Loop‘ which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2010.
In 2012 Armando created the HBO US political satire Veep which in 2019 has run for seven seasons. For his work on this 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 Charles Dickens’ Novel, David Copperfield.
In 2020, Armando created the science fiction comedy series Avenue 5 on the HBO channel, featuring Hugh Laurie as the Captain of a space tourist cruise ship.
Armando enjoys speaking along with Q&A’s at corporate after dinner events.