First of all, what award have you won tonight?
“I’ve won the outstanding contribution to comedy award… I’ve been dying for this one!”
Are you surprised at how long it’s taken you to get this award?
“It’s taken me twenty years to get this award; I’ve chipped away at it”
I was saying earlier that I think you’re the most important writer of British comedy since Spike Milligan
“Really? That’s very kind of you”
Well you, Peter Baynham, Chris Morris and co, you were the first guys since Spike to really take Britain and society and look at it in a satirical manner and go actually this is where society fails and this is where we can satirize it and you guys were the ones that did that.
“Well thank you very much, that’s very kind of you. Spike Milligan is a big hero of mine, so that’s very nice.”
“I was a real fan of radio comedy and I got really excited as a kid and as a teenager listening to really good stuff and I used to tape it and swap it with friends at school,- you know learn and recite it and whatever. So I’m always really touched when kids and students and young people come up to me and say, ‘we used to tape all of your shows and we used to swap them’ I love that.”
I remember reading an interview a few weeks ago where you said you were a lens down member of the entertainment industry and then The Thick of It came out and you became a lens up member.
“It’s strange yeah, it’s a bizarre thing and I have noticed that more in the last year especially with the film and things like the Oscars and so on and on the one level it’s quite nice and on the other I kind of enjoy being able to go on the tube and bus and people not staring at me. I have to deal with people’s stares now, but I’m hoping that might die down.”
Do you like being dragged into speed dating arenas like this? (The media room for the event was an empty disco room, complete with glitter ball that resembled a very bad speed dating event)
“I don’t mind actually. I was joking upstairs that I don’t know who anyone is but I actually get a real buzz out of meeting new comedians and new writers and trying to encourage them… the good ones obviously, a lot of them are shit, but that’s because a lot of everybody is.”
I was reading an article last night saying that comedy is something you’re born with; you’re born with natural wit.
“I think so, you can guide people who you think have got talent, you know, advise them on the best way to go about it, but you can’t tell an actor who doesn’t have funny bones how to make it funny.”
“A lot of the casting process is about just weeding out people who aren’t funny, like Chris Addison (Olly in The Thick of It) He’s never acted but I found him very funny and when I did a casting with him I found him a genuinely amusing funny guy and I thought he’s the guy in my head that I see doing this part.”
Do you find with the success of The Thick of It that Westminster are now afraid of what The Thick of It may bring out?
“Well, someone told me a story that David Cameron was having a consultation with his strategy team and said, ‘When I get into Number 10 I want to call the cabinet office the Department Of Strategy and Communications’ and somebody said ‘no, that spells DOSAC’ (the government department in The Thick of It) and David went ‘On no, we can’t call it that’”
Do you find it quite strange that in The Thick of It and Time Trumpet you’ve got scenes of Gordon Brown fighting and suggestions that David Cameron will say whatever he thinks will make him popular. When you see that, do you think, ‘that’s brilliantly funny’ or do you think, ‘that’s quite scary’?
“Well, I did at the time because I felt that, so it comes as no surprise to me that that is the case because I thought that at the time. I just find it funny to kind of try and put that into comedy. I like it if other people discover it and then go ‘Oo that’s true!’
Have you seen Four Lions yet?
“Oh yes, it’s very good, it’s very good. It’s both very uncomfortable and quite reassuring, whenever, in your head you’re thinking ‘surely’ and then in the next scene answers the question that you have in your head.”
So it’s very much along the lines of what you guys were doing with The Day Today and Brass Eye
“Possibly, yeah, I mean it’s a very well acted, well scripted, well directed, quite involving story. It throws no punches as to what these guys are up to.”
Knowing that you’re now a great success in Hollywood as well as over here there have been a lot of rumours that you and Steve Coogan are getting together to take Alan Partridge over to America.
“I don’t know, at the moment we’re just talking about whether we should, and the ideas we’ve come up with are very much Alan in the UK and his ideas of what he could be, rather than, you know, Americanised.”
So you don’t see Alan, for example getting Simon Cowell’s spot on American Idol?
“No, that’s too good for Alan; Alan’s future is always brighter in his head than it is in the real world.”
I always liked the idea, in my head that Alan would one day be asked to cover 2012 and he goes ‘yes, yes, yes’ and then it turns out he’s covering the Paralympics.
“Yes, there is a whole breed of sports reporter who’s hauled out to go to the Winter Olympics and cover some of the very obscure sports absolutely. I think Alan harbours this distortion that, with reality TV bringing back your Keith Chegwin’s and your Tony Blackburn’s and so on that his time will come, but it hasn’t come, he hasn’t had that call.”
I ask as I did my second year dissertation on Alan Partridge and the history of the British Sitcom and always loved how, the joke was always on Alan and that you could do exactly what he does in real life, so you would play air bass in a room when you think you’re on your own and then you get caught and you just freeze and think ‘what do I do now?’
“One of the things I discovered when I was out in Hollywood was that the opening titles to Superbad, there’s a silhouette of a guy dancing, they were actually inspired to do that when they saw the DVD menu of I’m Alan Partridge series 2, they really enjoyed that so they put it in the movie.”
Did you enjoy Superbad more when you found that out?
“No, I didn’t know that, I really liked Superbad, but I was invited round to visit Seth Rogen and his writers on the set of The Green Hornet and it turned out they were big fans of Alan Partridge.”
How strange do you find it that people go, ‘wow, you’re Armando Iannucci, we know your work’?
“I always found it very strange and I’ve always had this insecurity thing of ‘at some point somebody will find me out’ the next project will be utter shit and then it will be revealed to the world that I have just ridden off the back of other people’s talents, I still live in dread of that moment.”
But surely you must think now that actually that’s not going to happen?
“I do occasionally think, ‘I’m 45 now, I’ve nearly got through this’ another 15 years and I’ll have got through my working life without being miserable, drunken, you know.”
So, will you stop in 15 years or will you go, ‘the day I die is the day I stop’?
“I can’t imagine stopping, I might slow down and I might do other things but I can’t imagine stopping.”
My final question is what’s your ideal job, if you could make any project tomorrow what would you love it to be?
“Well, I think it’s what I do, I’m kind of, I’m in the middle of the moment of plotting out slapstick and we’re just having fun thinking of more complicated ways that people can get hurt badly, in a visually interesting way, and occasionally we just look at each other and think, ‘this is ridiculous, what are we doing, we’re being paid to do this, this is madness!’ and I just feel blessed that I’m doing that and not going into a Bank everyday.”
