31 Facts About Armando Iannucci

Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer and performer.

Armando Iannucci created the HBO political satire Veep, and was its showrunner for four seasons from 2012 to 2015.

Armando Iannucci followed this with the feature films The Death of Stalin in 2017 and The Personal History of David Copperfield, a 2019 adaptation of the novel David Copperfield.

Armando Iannucci's father, called Armando, was from Naples, while his mother was born in Glasgow to an Italian family.

Armando Iannucci moved to Scotland in 1950 and ran a pizza factory in Springburn in Glasgow.

Armando Iannucci was educated at St Peter's Primary School, St Aloysius' College, Glasgow, the University of Glasgow and University College, Oxford, where he studied English literature.

Armando Iannucci 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.

Armando Iannucci was particularly inspired by the American comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen, later calling him his "all-time comedy hero".

Armando Iannucci first received widespread fame as the producer for On the Hour on Radio 4, which transferred to television as The Day Today.

Armando Iannucci 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.

Between 1995 and 1999, Armando Iannucci produced and hosted The Saturday Night Armistice.

The series consisted of Armando Iannucci pondering pseudo-philosophical and jocular ideas and fantasies in between surreal sketches.

Armando Iannucci has been quoted as saying it is the comedy series he is most proud of making.

Armando Iannucci 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.

However, beginning with season five, Armando Iannucci stepped down as showrunner due to "personal reasons".

The radio series Scraps With Armando Iannucci, which followed late in 1998, featured Armando Iannucci using his tape-fiddling skills to present a review of the year.

Armando Iannucci 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.

Armando Iannucci was a regular columnist for the classical music magazine Gramophone.

In July 2023, Armando 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.

Armando Iannucci's third feature film was an adaptation of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield entitled The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Armando Iannucci has won two Sony Radio Awards and three British Comedy Awards.

Armando Iannucci was subject of a 2006 edition of The South Bank Show.

At the 2011 British Comedy Awards, Armando Iannucci received the Writers' Guild of Britain Award.

Armando Iannucci was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.

Alastair Campbell's response to his appointment was "Three little letters can have more impact than you realise", to which Armando Iannucci replied, via Twitter, "WMD".

In July 2012 Armando Iannucci received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Exeter.

Armando Iannucci was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to film and television.

Armando Iannucci seemed to contemplate targeting the Liberal Democrats in the fourth series of The Thick of It, rather as the first three had targeted what he perceived as the failings within the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

In July 2018, Armando Iannucci announced his support on Twitter for People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.

Armando Iannucci expressed these views the following month in an editorial in the Daily Mirror, and they went on to be reported in other British newspapers.

Armando Iannucci is a former patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity supporting women through difficult pregnancies.