Armando Iannucci went to the University of Oxford to pursue a career in comedy via the Oxford Revue. Once there however, he “proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it”. It was not until halfway through his D.Phil that he finally decided to abandon academia and commit himself to comedy, with an opportunity that arose at Radio Scotland. The BBC has been a large part of his career ever since. Although now more famous for his television career, Iannucci feels strongly about the creative capacity of the radio: “It’s all about the imagination….you don’t have to say, ‘Can we afford to show this joke?’ It really forces you to think about every word, you can’t pull a funny face to be funny”. Iannucci tells us that the biggest mistake that young writers make is to overwrite, not knowing when enough is enough.

On the topic of current trends, Iannucci has reservations about the growth of online media, such as YouTube. “Online [videos] are usually two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. It’s very difficult to teach people how to make thirty minutes, which remains the traditional and popular form of any comedy”. Iannucci cites the rise of the DVD box set as proof of the enduring appeal of the established television format: “If anything, people are prepared to devote a whole weekend to watching twenty hours of something. If something is captivating and imaginative and engaging, people don’t mind how long it is”. However Iannucci is not solely negative about the changing face of media production, excitedly proclaiming: “You actually don’t have to wait until a channel says, ‘go away and make this’, because you can make stuff on your own. Obviously the resources are better if someone is paying for it, but you can make stuff”.

For Iannucci, the media has a symbiotic relationship with the political establishment: “The establishment is the media… James Purnell, who was the culture secretary, is now back at the BBC where he started”. When asked about the recent Leveson Inquiry, Iannucci admits, “to be honest, I haven’t yet formulated my view,” but he is adamant that certain parts of the media “have behaved as if they are beyond the law…it wasn’t so much watching the politicians squirm, it was watching how disrespectful the newspaper editors were to the process that they were in, even though it was judicial and they were sworn under oath”.

Iannucci also laments the rise of the career politician, at the expense of less glamourised but perhaps more effective leaders: “It’s partly our fault, because we expect them to be presentable…there are so few personalities now in politics, that the ones that are personalities are the ones that really make the headlines. It is your Boris Johnsons and your Farages, and Ed Miliband is castigated for being a bit boring”. Has politics become a case of style over substance? Iannucci draws on Clement Attlee’s premiership as an example of the public’s changing attitude to politics: “Clement Attlee was a really dull, kind of, bank man, but one of the most effective and transformative prime ministers of the last hundred years”. Asked whether he thinks Attlee would be elected in today’s political climate, Iannucci emphatically exclaims: “No, of course not! He looks like this little kind of insurance salesman!”

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