Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci OBE: decades of award-winning comedy

Armando Iannucci, who has helped create a raft of influential comedy programmes and film, will receive an OBE from the Prince of Wales today.

Armando Iannucci receives OBE - 'Surreal and hilarious'

Armando Iannucci, who has lampooned the great and the good of British society, was today awarded an OBE.

The last full series of Armando Iannucci's blistering satire brought us a coalition government, carrying an innefectual junior partner and fighting a weak, disorganised opposition. But aside from the contemporary echoes, the show stuck to what's been its central point all along: that so much modern politics is a series of PR stunts and botches, conceived not to make the world better but to get or keep power. The hour-long inquiry episode was riveting, Roger Allam shone as the newly empowered (in theory) Peter Mannion, and Peter Capaldi's fearsome spin doctor Malcolm Tucker bowed out in a final episode to rank with any sitcom finale.

Knowing when to end a show is one of the most difficult things for TV writers and stars, but Armando Iannucci got it just right with this fourth and final series of The Thick Of It.

The political satire remained razor sharp, Malcolm Tucker remains one of the most incredible TV creations of all time ("You don't know Jackie f***ing Chan about me") and the penultimate Goolding Inquiry episode - which couldn't have been any more timely - was a brave and bold twist to the show's magic formula, which paid off brilliantly.

We'll keep our fingers crossed that Tucker may return for one (or two) final specials in years to come, but if this really is the end, then what a stunning way to bow out.

Hot 100 2012: No. 1 - Armando Iannucci interview

With the The Thick of It bowing out in a blaze of glory, Veep delighting viewers Stateside and an OBE in the bag, Armando Iannucci has had a triumphant year. Brian Donaldson speaks to this year's Hot 100 number one.

I was surprised to see the new series of Harry & Paul (Sunday, BBC Two) being aired at 10pm on a Sunday. Surely its natural home is a Friday evening, before or after Have I Got News for You? But after a moment's reflection, I appreciated what was going on. Sunday nights have become the most important ratings battlefield, with those who want something serious watching either Homeland on Channel 4 or Andrew Marr's History of the World on BBC One. Those who want cheering up with a bit of comedy head off for Downton Abbey on ITV1 - but where do they go for their laughs after that? ITV1 and BBC One head straight into the news. Channel 4 goes into comedy with the not very funny Friday Night Dinner. That leaves BBC Two.

The question is, are Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse still funny? Yes mostly, is the short answer, though their sketches are uneven. There were some old favourites included in the first episode, such as the intelligent and very posh surgeons, as well as the reactionary duffers in their gentleman's club discussing who in public life is and isn't "queer" (it was Michael Gove's turn in this one). These were unapologetic and well executed both.

But of the new material, some, such as a sketch involving two Irish-American cops in a bar, needed to be run through the typewriter again. While others, such as a black and white Strangers on a Train sketch, I felt I had seen before, Fifties parodies being their stock in trade. A sketch in which a posh racehorse trainer was talking in an unintelligible way to an Irish jockey, meanwhile, had shades of the Ted and Ralph sketches from The Fast Show. But that one can be forgiven if only because they managed to smuggle the "c" word into the stream of impenetrable verbiage in such a way that you were not sure you had really heard it. The most enjoyable of the new sketches was a subtitled parody of The Killing, which then bled into other sketches.

Their satire works best when their targets are generic and broad rather than specific. Their parodies of Question Time and Dragons' Den in this new series, for example, felt too in-jokey, like an office Christmas review in which you send up the bosses. The former would have worked just as well if the chairman wasn't supposed to be David Dimbleby.

The moronic questioner - "If the bankers, the bonuses, the bankers, the bonuses" - was spot on, however, though it didn't need David Dimbleby to spell out that he was a moron. "Man in the green jumper, do you have a clichéd thought for us?"

But the satire of Harry & Paul was never intended to be as sophisticated as that of Armando Iannucci, and there is room for both.

Getting On is a minor masterpiece of a hospital comedy that truly deserves a wider audience.

This week, the staff were grappling with a green initiative cascading down from on high but it was Sister Den's story that caused cardiac arrest as she struggled with her pregnancy.

Joanna Scanlan, who also plays the 'blockage' known as Terri in Armando Iannucci's top-drawer political satire The Thick Of It, is an unsung heroine of British comedy.

Armando Iannucci's Thick of It bows out with 750,000

The Thick of It's last ever episode drew a fairly modest audience on Saturday night, early data shows.

When a chief whip on a bike is caught behaving out of order, when a prime minister is accidentally heard calling someone a bigot, or when a chancellor of the exchequer is spotted fare-dodging on a train, there is only one thing to say: "It is just like The Thick of It!" we cry.

But with the end last night of the final series of the acclaimed BBC sitcom, an intriguing question remains; how long will the phrase survive in common British parlance? Will it go on to join long-defunct sitcoms such as Grange Hill and Steptoe and Son to become a part of the national psyche?

Signs look good, since the show quickly took over from Yes, Minister, the political sitcom that inspired it, once frequently used to describe the chicanery of civil service mandarins.

Former Observer columnist Armando Iannucci's show represented its era with uncanny accuracy, aping the spineless manoeuvring and ruthless spinning of its targets with little need for caricature.

It is fair then to assume that Malcolm Tucker will live on at least as long as naughty Tucker from Grange Hill.

So farewell then Malcolm Tucker, a prince of darkness for whom the term spin doctor doesn't quite seem sufficient. Spin surgeon general would be a better title. Yes, it's the end of the line for peerless political satire The Thick Of It. The campaign to make Armando Iannucci do a U-turn on that decision starts here.