Armando Iannucci in Quotes: Here are 13 interesting and funny things the Scottish satirist has said about performing, comedy and politics

Born in Glasgow in 1964, Armando Iannucci was educated at St Peter's Primary School and St Aloysius' College, before going in to study at the University of Glasgow and University College, Oxford. He abandoned a Doctorate in religious language to pursue a career in comedy.

He first cut his comedy teeth at BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, where he worked with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour, which became the television show The Day Today. It spawned the character Alan Partridge, played by Steve Coogan, who would feature in a number of other shows involving Iannucci.

He fronted the Channel 4 programmes Friday Night Armistice and The Armando Iannucci Shows, then returned to the BBC to create the spoof documentary Time Trumpet and the political sitcom The Thick of It – which inspired critically-acclaimed film In the Loop, featuring some of the same characters, including Peter Capaldi’s fearsome spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.

A move to American television followed, with the HBO political satire Veep, for which he won two Emmys – which join two Sony Radio Awards, three British Comedy Awards and an OBE on his mantelpiece.

Since then he has written and directed two further feature films – 2017’s The Death of Stalin and The Personal History of David Copperfield in 2019 – and in 2020 returned to HBO to create comedy series Avenue 5.

Here are 13 funny and revealing things the satirist has said in interviews.