The Thick Of It

Omnishambles: my unlikely accolade

I never thought my late tweak to the script of The Thick of It would catch on. But the word has mutated omnieverywhere.

Omnishambles gets OED word of the year award

The Thick Of It's 'omnishambles' word has been awarded word of the year status by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sadly it was the final episode of possibly the last ever series of The Thick of It (Saturday, BBC Two). After a strange interlude in which the regular characters went before a select committee - a scenario which they didn't really play for laughs - it was back to the verbal gymnastics we know and love. Iannucci has a gift for putting into Malcolm Tucker's mouth similes and metaphors of great originality, ones which manage to shock and amuse at the same time.

It looks like Malcolm is going to prison for perjury, with Ollie Reeder, the young pretender, taking over his throne. The joke was that Tucker couldn't get arrested, literally, because every police station he reported to had a backlog due to Home Office incompetence.

Tucker had planned an exit for himself that would be worthy of a Shakespearean tragic hero, but things didn't quite go his way. Standing on the steps of a police station about to address a waiting mob of journalists you expected him to explode. Instead, more poignantly, he hesitated and said: "It doesn't matter."

So farewell then to BBC2's The Thick Of It. And a special '****ety-bye' to Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker. We will probably never see their like on TV again.

If I was being picky I might say I would have preferred it if Tucker had bowed out with the penultimate episode's withering government inquiry speech. But now is not the time for being picky. Now is the time to order the box set.

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.

"So, now I have to step into your shoes, but after you've shat in them," said Ollie in the last Thick of It, learning that his first task as Malcolm's stand-in was to spin the arrest of his predecessor on charges of perjury. Malcolm didn't think Ollie was going to be able to fill those shoes, though. "You're not even Manchester's top Malcolm Tucker tribute band," he roared before a meltdown that combined blistering invective with genuine melancholy and pain. Glenn got a lot of things off his chest too, in an episode that ended on the implication that, while some cogs had gone, the machine rumbles on regardless. I hope this is not the end.

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.

TV Review: The Thick Of It finale

As Malcolm Tucker would say, it was "just another day at the f***-office". Can there really be no more?

Armando Iannucci: Ending will leave you wanting more

Armando Iannucci has promised The Thick Of It fans that the final ever series of the political satire will leave them craving more - and he's even hinted that there might be more to come.

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.