Armando Iannucci

Stand up to Murdoch, Armando Iannucci tells BBC

Thick of It creator applauded as he accepts award with thanks to corporation for holding its nerve - and anti-James Murdoch gag.

'In the Loop' screenwriter's brush with Oscar

"Hi, Mum, I've been nominated for an Oscar." It's the dream call from any son or daughter. And swiftly comes back the dream reply: "Congratulations. I've got someone in fixing my boiler, so I'm going to have to go."

Only one thing is certain for Armando Iannucci...

...he'll wear Armani at the Oscars.

Mark Thompson and The Thick Of It video mashup

Just when BBC director general Mark Thompson thought his Newsnight encounter with Jeremy Paxman couldn't get any worse... it does. A BBC 6 Music fan has combined the best bits of Thommo's interview, such as they were, with clips from Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It.

Annotated 'In The Loop' script

When this year's Oscar nominations were announced, one of the surprises was a well-deserved writing nod for the archly funny British production In The Loop. As director Armando Iannucci's comments on these script pages make clear, getting those words right wasn't easy.

Would an Alan Partridge film equal cashback?

Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci are rumoured to confirm a big screen transfer for Norwich's finest imminently. A fatally overdue move, or testimony to Alan's timelessness?

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Returns!

'There'll be a 2nd series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Huzzah! Huzzah!' tweeted producer Armando Iannucci earlier today.

Iannucci on Sweariest Oscar-Nominated Script Ever

Movieline's first stop on the Oscar-reaction rounds is Armando Iannucci, the In the Loop director whose caustic political satire today earned an Adapted Screenplay nomination for him and his co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche. However, more than just being rewarded for the innovation of its characters and story - which focuses on how one press-office zealot engineers a multinational war effort - the Academy may very well have nominated Iannucci and Co. for their exhaustive efforts in developing Loop's stirring new lexicon of profanity. Their side-splitting effort is the only comedy recognized in its respective category - no doubt an underdog against the likes of Up in the Air and Precious, but one that will be happy just to be in the Kodak Theater March 7.

Iannucci spoke with us this afternoon about his reaction to being nominated, Loop's improv factor, and taking Oscar to the outer limits of screen vulgarity.

Chris Addison, the comedian who plays the weedy Ollie Reeder in The Thick of It, has been given his own topical news show on Five Live, 7 Day Sunday.

As usual, there is a certain amount of "category error" in this choice. As Ollie in The Thick of It, Addison is hilariously funny, but this is because his lines are written by the comic genius Armando Iannucci. On 7 Day Sunday, however, Addison is writing his own lines, assisted by a studio gang who would laugh at a pig's bladder on a stick. On The Thick of It there is snappy dialogue at a thousand miles an hour, but if you talk like that on radio without enough jokes or substance then the listener's mind skitters all over the place trying to concentrate, before giving up. The show's brief was to "pull apart the week's big news stories", but in the event the only news covered was snow. Weirdly for someone who made his name in a political satire there wasn't any. Why not? The Gordon Brown coup should have provided acres of material, but it took ages to get round to, and then got a paltry two minutes.

As with all the other new shows, I feel strongly that one should not judge on the basis of a debut. Addison is witty and will certainly improve when he starts to take things a little slower. But unless he cracks down on the nervous giggling, his team will still sound like they're stuck in a small lift, supplied with nitrous oxide instead of oxygen.

As our real-life Government entered what are quite possibly its death throes, so did the fictitious government in Armando Iannucci's uproarious political sitcom. Rebecca Front arrived to play a hand-wringing minister but the focal point was, as ever, Peter Capaldi's vicious spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker. Weirdly, Tucker's sacking in the penultimate episode proved one of the saddest moments on TV this year.