Armando Giovanni Iannucci CBE (/jəˈnuːtʃi/; born 28 November 1963) is a Scottish satirist,[1] writer, director, producer, performer, and panellist.

[2] Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom The Thick of It and the spoof documentary Time Trumpet in 2006.

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.

[11] He was writing a DPhil thesis about 17th-century religious language, with particular reference to Milton's Paradise Lost, which he abandoned to follow a comedy career.

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.

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.

[16] It starred Chris Langham as an incompetent cabinet minister being manipulated by a cynical, foul-mouthed Press Officer, Malcolm Tucker.

[17] 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.

[18] 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.

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.

[19] 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.

[21] In 2019, he began work on a new science fiction sitcom for HBO called Avenue 5, which premiered in 2020[22] He subsequently became the series executive producer and directed the pilot.

[23] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[24] 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.

[20][25] In July 2023, Iannucci announced that he was working on a stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's classic Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

[29] The film secured the eighth highest placing in the UK box office in its opening week – despite its relatively insignificant screening numbers.

[12] The film was banned in Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for allegedly mocking the countries' pasts and making fun of their leaders.

In January 2006 he was named News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at the University of Oxford,[36][37] where he has delivered a series of four lectures under the title "British Comedy – Dead Or Alive?".