Armando Iannucci interview (Mark Lawson, 2007)

[Music] [Music] it's hard to decide whether politicians are more vain and artistically and television presenters or vice versa Armando Iannucci didn't have to pick because he satirized them equally we receive fours government comedy the thick of it which he produced savages ministers and spin doctors but before that he went for broadcasters making good programs about bad programs the day to day sent up news bulletins while Steve Coogan shows about Alan Partridge which he annucci co-wrote and produced satirized a desperate light entertainment presenter most comedy producers would not be recognizable to viewers but ianucci hosted his own shows before retreating behind the screen again for time trumpet which combines his two main targets by attacking politicians and broadcasters through manipulated news footage [Music] politics and comedy have been a large part of what you've done so a good place to start probably what first made you laugh and when did you first become interested in politics right what first maybe laughs I remember the first of a joke that I got which was in a comics probably in the Beano of wizard and chips as I know that which was two blokes walking past a who was selling a violin for must just have been early decimal days so like violin for like 5p on one guy says to don't buy it it's a fiddle and I thought that was the funniest thing ever and I seem to remember spending a day telling everyone I'd met and you've been that I would have read what I did about seven or eight or something say very early 70s which would be decimalisation yes yes and so then just short them politically if the the Heath years the yeah three-day week homework by candlelight that's what I remember from that but what was your first political memory first political there oh well do I remember the three-day week I remember the blackouts and yes I remember I remember this chap James Callaghan sort of a fun killer figure and who had big round shoulders and a joke like that's a lot and and I remember Mike yard would basically I think I got all my political education from the might yar would chill and Saturday nights because he used to do Harold Wolfe and Callaghan one day halls right yeah but he couldn't do that sure which was his great undoing I was a strange kind of odd because I at the same time is really loving comedy especially raid your comedy I was a bit of a politics nerd and you know I would stay up very late to watch election night shows and strange by-elections and things like that when other of my generation were just going out and getting off their face running I always was a bit square and we guess from your name and your accent that it was an Italian Scottish upbringing but glad day but what kind of family what kind of family yes I mean I made this a class question essentially oh it's a have aliens can two-headed well I don't know it's a difficult because we you know my father was I suppose you would call him a small businessman I remember growing up in cuckoo tilaka he had a big workshop across the road that was full of all these machines that lathes and Sonny he used to make some fire surrounds and cabinets and one of the machines chopped half his finger off that was a I have seen my Catholic family yes although not not dogmatically so I mean my father didn't go to church and we were sort of very very relaxed I'd say we were a relaxed Catholic family although I was a secondary school and indeed a primary ARBs I went to some Catholic sort of the local Catholic boys school st. Aloysius st. Aloysius yes which was a Jesuit school but it wasn't like you know it wasn't a James Joyce Ian's nightmare world of hundreds of Jesuit priests sucking your brains out that I I had a lot of ice off approved of them in a way because there were very young they were very keen on education and they were very keen on inquiry and their method of teaching as Ari was to encourage us to ask questions so we had we had this thing the question box in our re classes where you could write any question on a theological nature Darrin anonymously for it in and they would try and answer it but of course most of them were about his masturbation wrong I think that was fundamentally all the questions earlier was the Jesuit answer to this question well it was a surprise well actually the questions clearly when we got on to it you know we realized we could that we could push this as much and you could see the Sun priest would take questions out and look at it and just kind of blanch and go what I'm not answering that and I can't remember what the answer was I think it was a sort of officially it's wrong but hey we're all human aren't we so it's all part of life's rich tapestry and the famous paradox of the way the Jesuits educators that they teach you to ask questions as you say but in often leads to the boys questioning the religion and turning against it but that that's what happened to you yeah not violently so I mean I still feel I still feel I've never I mean I don't regard myself as like a an atheist or uh I sort of Richard Dawkins all religious people are mad and evil III have a lot of sympathy with with the notion of being religious I suppose I I mean theology interests me and and the fact that you know universally we come up with religions every tribe who's ever existed seems to have come up with it sort of implies that there's something something quite I don't know something good there that you know I what I hate is sort of fundamentalism and literalism dog Mad Dog mattis ISM or great wave velocity I you know I hate I hate rigidity but I I've always been drawn towards things that are you know have a sort of spiritual sight that my suppose it seems an obvious connection but the the training to ask questions and that was a useful training for a satirist I just don't like the idea of people who seem to have all the answers do you I mean and and I for example I could never although I'm interest in politics I could never be a politician because you have to at some point make that decision that you've got to sound like you know what you're doing and you've thought through every topic and you have a solution to it which you know if I was if I was in front of Jeremy Paxman I would just fall apart because any question he would ask I'd be thinking well the one hand is this but on the other hand that I'm not really sure I don't know what do you think should we go for a drink which I don't think would work in politics you'll be sacked by the spin doctors quite quickly and be head of some fringe minority party within months something given that politics has been important a lot of what you've written that again in childhood I mean Glasgow a lot of it was heavily labor but what was your family Labour know I think I know my mom was he fight but then she took strongly against Margaret Thatcher I thought she was a terrible woman especially calm or grounds that she was mad and it's not obvious no but a lot of people said that subsequently Herod was insane at the beginning she thought that the G I think so yeah yes I mean I'm trying to read but as she probably voted in the 79 in an election for Thatcher but but ever since she's been wildly anti facts right and so I sort of grew up in a probably a slightly right of center live liberal to right of center can i have sold presumably ending up at oxford writing a thesis you were quite a good student so a spot wave I was kind of yeah I sort of regret the fact that as an undergraduate I did more work than I should have really I didn't I mean I enjoy but I was undergraduate but I didn't you know I didn't do anything madly ambitious or extracurricular and so I spent all my time as a postgraduate doing that which is why I never written a thesis but yes I suppose I was I was very bitter school you was yeah I was I was quite bookish and I think I think at home I was seen as being very quiet and studious and at school I was a bit of a kind of you know I was the one who did the impressions of all the teachers and told the jokes and stuff at that but although I saw labored through my school time and Anna University thinking at some point I was going to be found out that I wasn't quite as brainy as I seem to be looking at my marks and at some point someone somewhere was gonna tweak and then it'd be curtains and and as I've got older and I've sort of met more and more people in in in kind of areas and positions of authority the more I've realized that everyone's like that and you know I'm sure even the governor of the Bank of England just thinks I don't know I don't know I'll just keep quiet I'll put interest rates up today and hope for the best I just think it's actually a massive con all of life is is a massive corn really I think we are you don't know what you're doing no no idea at all I don't know what the next question is actually the next question was going to be about whether you did impersonation of the teacher school that even you anticipated that it is there in the background of most comic performers that they were the class clown now famously it's seen as a distraction either from bullying famously or from being too swatted yeah presumably in your case it was a kind of humanizing thing that you well it was a sort of you know wasn't very sporty and neither was I very sort of trendy I mean I've never to this day sort of understood fashion and how it works and what you should be wearing and whatnot and stuff like that so I don't know again whether it was just another way of showing had a bit of life to me other than you know work but I was very I mean I did things like I remember it's school we always used to pull on this little charity concert that Christmas for the local sort of pensioners hormone corner and stuff and it was it raised money and stuff and I you know about 12 or 13 I was sort of comparing it and I was I was telling jokes just nicked off the radio so I was doing sort of pinched pinched plagiarized stand-up off the radio in your um the first of your oxford lectures on comedy and you've that's what is you gave them you are you a visiting professor I know more I've been stripped in the first of those lectures you gave us this glimpse of the young Armando Iannucci watching television and apparently according to you analyzing it at an incredibly deep level why am i does sitcoms do some of it inside and some of it outside yeah and they use studio they use film did you really watch at that analytical oh yeah but it's not that I mean maybe is I just always thought it was a bit weird and a bit obvious that when they were shooting stuff in stage studios they do on tape and then whenever they cut to something outside it was on film and it just looked really grainy and mushy and I just found that a bit weird really I was had this suspicion as I was watching television in the 70s and 80s that it was a bit rubbish in British TV was a bit rubbish and a bit cheap well there you were watching in the seventies which people now in their 70s and 60s in TV clay claimed was the golden age of television comedy but clearly you didn't feel that for this sort of sale later didn't dr. die I sort of dug out some of the old 70s and 80s classics like Steptoe and whatever happened to light lads and it is actually incredible when you watch it you see the how good the acting is and how good the writing is and some episodes of porridge are really very sort of bittersweet very sad and I mean only Barker's performance is just you know he's become someone else and it's a shame we've kind of labeled 76 on this rather sort of naff who kind of are you being served kind of well people thinking of are you being served blessed this house Terry and Jude in those kind of shows you know and yes they were all there but there was some really really powerful stuff there and and actually what did happen in the 70s was that the the people in the country who were best at writing comedy and performing comedy did it for the big channels did it for ITV and for BBC one and I think comedy is the only genre in television now were the best people in that business don't automatically think of doing stuff for the big channels you know the best writers write stuff for BBC to--and for channel 4 and BT 3 for they shy away from doing stuff with you see one whereas if you went to a dramatist like you know Paul Abbott or Russell T Davies or wherever and say do you want to do something for for ITV or something they'd say yeah of course yeah because I want it to be seen by as many people as possible but he made the point of that lecture that when executives say on TV make it a bit more mainstream they mean make it broader ravishing yeah yeah yeah yeah I think so there's become this sort of code isn't it so make it safe and I don't think make it mainstream should be make it safe you know I don't think I mean obviously example you look at Doctor Who now I mean it's mainstreamed it's not safe it's quite innovative and and the themes and the stories are I mean there was that double episode all about safety the last series that's teatime entertainment for kids so I wouldn't say that's safe the other thing I strongly remember watching TV at about the same time was how theatrically was sitcom at that stage came almost entirely out of stage that's right and the people in sitcoms that grew up in a sort of rap tradition and but it was it was blocked like a play so everyone stood facing the front even if they were having an enormous family row five of them that I'll be sitting in a role behind the table so that we could see them all and they'll all be sort of even that there even if their owner or the Dolby's so pitching out towards the audience there because they they were trained to project out an auditorium of about three or four hundred people well as I was saying I don't get out much nowadays since mr. Slocum is no longer living at home I mean it's very difficult for a woman on her own I mean you can't just go down to the pub for a quick drink with all those men ogling at you can do but not more than twice a week anyway and you've gone to Oxford I see not with the ambition of becoming a comedian a writer performer no although it's probably the both the only careerist thing I've ever done really which was a I kind of liked the idea of I mean I saw applied for us because you know I was a bit bookish in it I did think it would be a nice environment to be bookish in yeah but but at the back of my mind there was this notion that you know though this awareness that there was a tradition of doing like review and you know Monty Python and Beyond the Fringe and that whole kind of satire tradition I Grover but of course I went to Oxford at a time when it to say that you came from Oxford was like the kiss of death in any comedy career you you had to come from norc's Ford or Cambridge you know and do stand-up then so actually it was probably a bad move in it anyway and university offers the chance for bottom the Jesuits would have called sin what were you were wild students no Dobbs no no I to this day I carry memories of live but the one in the only time I got far far too drunk to be able to function properly I'll never drink Southern Comfort again and it was only because they'd laced my drinks but I know I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't a sort of wild know I but I don't really consider myself as a wild wild person so nobody see that's why I'm interested in because there is this a lot of comic performers yeah many of whom you've worked with they do have this wild streak we read about in the news the world week after week you cigarette I've never smoked a cigarette once I never feel fel impelled to really why do I don't yeah anyway although I'm worried that if I do you think I worried if I take an enormous I don't even know what you call it now a bun among of track cocaine mixed with cannabis and sherry and what the other you know but fast a big wine and some of that I'm worried that I might really really like it and I'm gonna go so my only way around is just to think now I won't get involved in all that sort of thing you know Catholics often agonize over sex but did you go through that well I know that at school at one point I sort of seriously thought about being a priest but then I can a concluded well I couldn't because the whole business of celibacy was just never really gonna you know it's no no not really gonna work for me but again I wasn't you know I wasn't a sort of outwardly very em the word wasn't a lothario really I was very very shy and you could run for American president I'm a physics have you had your father gone back yes I've been for that yeah yeah from the streets of the Bronx cleaning out the country no I was you know I was very I'm I suppose outwardly I'm very quite dull really or conventional conventional it's another way of I prefer dull but conventional makes it so more exciting then conventional it shall be and the comedy the comedy he started in college what kind of stuff he's very unpolitical it was you know stupid stuff I I had this character called Ken theft who was billed as a slightly disturbed comedian and he was a sort of Ivor Cutler esque kind of very very softly spoken kind of had a bowler hat and a sort of waistcoat black bow tie and it used to impersonate capital letters and had to ask for sort of you know requests from the audience and occasionally I'd get someone else out from the audience to help me do a diphthong to say that you know so I would give you a J for example would i yes personally I have a little self props oh there we go ladies gentlemen capital letter J and kind of do that poot stupid glasses or the mustache or whatever and then just bend myself into a letter J and I go thank you very much and for some reason that seemed to amuse people I did a sort of strange thing I used in personally came home cooking with the voices of politicians it's stupid yeah it's quite embarrassing stuff - so how did that work cooking with the voices you know I'd take a slice of Margaret Thatcher and had you know but it turned out that the Kane home thing was was on a tape that was corrupted slightly and underneath it was a musical about the life of Frank bath and in in so the Ken home act would occasionally turn into songs from the life of Frank both which I can't remember now except they're they're they're obvious signs they're of the stuff you did later I mean that the sort of kind of career has connections with time trumpet Diamandis I suppose so yeah yeah there's some mucking about manipulating yeah yeah yeah basically I haven't moved off not long after Blair left office in 2007 he was heard by friends to say I'm going to go out there and sort it out myself he was last seen in Britain in 2009 when former defence secretary Geoff hoon a deeply unpopular politician at the time fell ill and the Queen invited Blair to switch off his life support machines eight seven six five four three two one [Applause] you ended up at the BBC but in radio yeah yeah I got a job first of all back up in Glasgow Regis cotton presenting presenting a trendy music show I've seen the word trendy makes it sound like I'm 58 a kind of youth a youth music show called by the wax which was a new thing buta Scott were trying to appeal to a younger listenership and they were on the lookout for people who could do life stuff it also be funny and I'd said I tape up with Mike sort of comedy stuff so I was asked to present it sure but I was then allowed to just go off and write my own little sketches and voice them and edit them and put on the sound effects and you know so it was a great training in in comedy production really so presenting your trendy music show radio had you is it presentable he wanted to be at that stage no I mean I think it was just interested in making comedy know whether that was maybe the time I saw myself more as a as a performer then as a sort of a back backroom person but principally I was interested in just been making comedy so this was like this was great this was like a dream come true to be actually putting stuff together and on radio you can put it together very quickly in it and it goes out you know that night and so I liked the and that's when I started doing topical stuff and the really significant show of your own at that stage was on the hour that was the first one how had that come around that had started when I sort of came down to London and started listening to news programmes on commercial radio and there was one called the way it is on Capitol that was very kind of in-your-face the way it is a music pumping was 30 minutes of pumping music overhead lines and I thought that's funny and at the same time as part of my sort of compulsory training I was put on a production course we had to do a little sample program at the end of it and it had to be kind of like a a news program and I thought well I don't really want to I don't want to make a news program but how about if we make a false news program so that became a little 10-minute thing that became the sort of inspiration for doing the pile of and at the same time as I was down there I was hearing Chris Morris who did his Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast show and he did sort of news parodies as well really pretty good and I just wrote to him said do one meet up and I've got this idea of doing a sort of fake news thing for Radio 4 and I sort of met him in the lobby of the BBC and his he said he'd parked his car outside but it was illegal he could find anywhere to park so we just got in his car and we spent about two hours just driving round and round broadcasting house because we thought well there's no way to part so just just keep going and I thought this is interesting the fact I can like talk to him for two hours and it just feel normal is a good start really and we found we liked the same sort of comedy and so we just clicked instantly and and that's really where we started on the hour and then I got in touch with other people who I thought would make good naturalistic performers and improvised us which is people like Steve Coogan and so I'm back up front and we just all came together for the show really and it just all sort of clicked in a strange way and it led to the the birth of Alan Parker was one of those things do you remember yeah the moment of his birth yeah I remember being in I can't remember quite remember where I was in rehearsal room we were just mucking about and I said to Steve look I think you should do a sports reporter but not an impression and so not John Watson or David Coleman but if you've got a voice that sounds like an amalgam and he can't do it so I wouldn't attempt but he came out with this sort of you know AHA yes yes gonna see it's rubbish that's why he doesn't not me and it was very strange because as soon as he came out with this voice we can have everyone in the room can I knew who it was the in a strange way we knew the life story of this person his sort of his frustrations are being seen as just a news reporter when fact really wanted to be taken seriously but not so seriously be seen as a sort of serious news guy he had more of a sort of light entertainment kind of ambition and and someone said very quickly someone said he's a partridge his surname is partridge and someone else said yeah and he's an Alan and it just you know Alan polls just came out within minutes there's a sports desk I'm Alan Partridge and it's a special desk of sport now as we look back on some of the sporting highlights of the last sporting season so lie down relax and let the sports commence but it's cycling championships you're after you can't say fairer than the Tour de prize from side to side in his own inimitable bike-riding way clasp in there on the inside pumping away with his with those gristle like muscling legs inside the those tight lycra shorts which have become his trademark I don't know what this man is playing at there's no way surely the judges must come down like a ton of bricks on that carrying bikes on top of a car is not a sportsman like way to run this race but things like that someone's saying he's a partridge these are just weird instincts not impossible to explain it is impossible you can and you can't sit down someone down and tell them how to make something funny you can only sit down with someone who you know is instinctively funny and and you know tell them how you do it and see if any of that chimes with what they do the closest analogy I I can have is is it something it's like music you know you just you can't explain why music works it just sort of certain harmonies somehow feel better some you know sounds and chords feel brighter than others you know and I'm sure there's some scientific explanation as to why but you know instinctively you just latch on to and that's why you know with certain jokes you know it's it's funny that the funny light the funny word that makes the joke funny is kept to the end of the sentence and things that but they're no rules to it you know you talk about how an implant rate began but when he radio and then TV series first as a track show and then the behind the scene series is about the writing of those how would that happen Steve Coogan would would improvise in character would it it was it was a long long process the writing was favored us was for I'm Alan Partridge myself Stephen Peter Balaam and we sit in a room five days a week and as we were plotting Steve Steve would rarely sit down he'd sort of pace up and down and be Alan so it sort of felt that Alan was in the room which you know after eight months of it can get quite raring yeah no offense against Steve but it's just Alan it's just so you did feel there was this fourth person in the room once we'd sort of nailed the plot together we'd occasioning and come out with the plot would come up with Alan isms which I'd Putin a big Alan document that's currently about two hundred pages long just lines that Alan would say on any topic but once we'd nailed the plot would go through and with sort of Len writer up scene-by-scene but we'd cast the whole thing pretty early and we'd solve improvise with the people with cast and resemble Alan's friend Michael who is a sort of handyman in the hotel Simon Greenhalgh came and decided to do it in a very very thick Geordie accent which we hadn't written but it Steve was being Alan with them and it was just funny seeing Alan trying to not patronize them but at the same time not understand a word he was saying because it was in Geordie and then sometimes the whole improvising thing can become creates more problems than it solves because it you end up producing just acres and acres and hours and hours of stuff that you have had to somehow boiled down into thirty minutes so the end I don't you know the bulk of it is written but but right up to the day of recording we'd always be mucking about it and you know frequently in rehearsals a scene that would spend a month getting right we we just chuck out because something happened in rehearsal that was far funnier and it's just it's an approach I've always been keen on this sort non-being non-proprietary all about your work you know not not saying no you can't change that because that's mine and I've spent four months getting that line right you know and the striking thing about Alan Partridge which it's important to remember it came before the office and extras yeah is the incredible bleakness they'd been failures failures before in comedy capped honoring Israeli at battle fault is very rare but scenes of a real real humiliation I mean that that that was you were pushing totally variably uh but again it's not that thing of you consciously thinking right like this let's make this dark it was just what would be funny to happen to Alan right he's stuck in a hotel that's happened to know what's the funniest thing that can happen well it gets worse surely that's the funniest thing around and and also I would go back to what say Ellie about this overly theatrical style of performing I think not to make it feel more real and and give that sense of the viewer so slightly eavesdropping on something they weren't meant to see we're still performed it in front of an audience because we still wanted it to be played for laughs as it were but not to meet the cast performed to each other rather than out to the audience I came up with this song not all the sets were these enormous crates so the audience came into the studio they were just looking at these enormous boxes and cuz the set the individual rooms of the hotel were inside these boxes so there was like there was like four walls and which is why the cameras were on you know they were handheld you could see how cramped Alan's bedroom was because we could go right around and then but at the same time Steve could take his rhythm of his performance to the last that he was hearing and you had some BBC difficulty with him because they didn't want him to swear I think so at the end of I think it's the fourth episode here's a little exchange with Dave Clifton the other sort of the Alan's got the night shift and Dave cliffs has got the breakfast show and he's handing off to Dave Clifton and during the handover so technically in dave clifton as part of the show Alan tells him to off and remember we had to refer up and up and up and up and the work came back initially that it was difficult to have someone say in a comedy and at the time things like this life and you know the dramas drama yeah fine you know and I said I said that I said but you can have this life and you can yeah dramas different people expect something differently from drama you know people the expectations from a comedies is less people don't want to be reminded of reality and I took that's a terrible slight on on on the genre of comedy really because you know fine I you know I I don't to be pompous about it I mean comedies that big people laugh and be entertaining but that doesn't mean to say it's it's of less import in terms of how it you know portrays how we work really and you know if you ask people in any survey of their favorite moments last of television the last 30 years whether it's it's usually a news event and a comedy you know it's Dell boys falling through the bar think I was you know it's more it's usually comedies are right up there so it you know company is quite important to they you know collective our collective cultural identity I didn't say all that to them but yeah I probably just probably just swore back there but anyway there was fine it was far they landed yeah the other issue that arise across the series of Alan Partridge you ended up being accused of being a comedy dinosaur for having a studio laughter tree yeah yeah but I mean that dementia ho-ho pedantic you want to be first of all I well I always used to take issue with it notion of it being called a laughter track because that flies that you know I've got in with a take full of noises and added enough you know it was done in front of an audience so what you hear is is the son of laughter and and I've always felt that I think there's something good and hearing other people laugh I mean what's terrible is if you watch your shell where the audience are laughing their heads off at it and you think about this isn't funny this sold dogmatic kind of Taliban ask principle of it's uncool to hear an audience laughing at something is these are I just I just don't like the idea of anyone telling us you know there's a right way there's a wrong way to do comedy you know there's there's hundreds of ways you know although the issue is comedy a lot of TV comedy gets darker and darker and from Alan Partridge through extras the office the royal family you wouldn't get physical laughter for large parts of that would you it would be it wouldn't be embarrassment but there would be an appalled silence yeah and sections really quite an odd dynamic would yes but again you see I wonder whether we're in danger of getting a little bit automatic in that as well and just thinking oh well this is the bit we're the seniors of such a cute embarrassment that you know everyone just says horrible things to each other and then looks at each other and appalled silence and again it's just it's one way it's not it's not everything and I think this sort of I think we're going back to sort of the healthier mix know that don't you know Catherine Tate in Little Britain you know law was protesting there about the fact that done in front of an audience we talked about your temperament which personality you said doll I said conventional their turn it's interesting between that's interesting comparison I think with Chris Morris you've worked with a lot and he when he was at channel 4 he he interfered with the transmission copy of one of his programs to have a subliminal insult about Michael grade then a channel for it's not to keep track then a channel for paying for the BBC nitrite II be you would never do something like that they would you you would never go that far probably not no I mean I don't know I don't know where I've never sort of pushed myself to the point where I thought no I really can't do that someone told me my big Christmas elf someone told me a story that's not some crisps up which was he went around this was before he was sort of well-known in whether it was a sort of local radio broadcaster but he he visited a friend who was doing a show in the world service and he was standing there in the studio and he saw a big red button and he said to the guy what happens if I push this and the guys who don't please don't because that'll switch everything off an system kicks in which means the signals gone down and there and I saw an emergency broadcast kicks in whatever you do don't don't switch it off the Chris put his finger on it and they went don't and then Chris went no I just don't think I could do this I think I would so what I'm getting at is you which is why you you're also producer I think is that you have a responsible streak in a way that a lot of before I suppose so but I kind of like maybe it's just cowardice actually because I actually like getting in place the people who I know probably would go and do it you know I think it kind of helps actually that I don't seem they're responsible I think that's I think that's kind of useful really it means I get given an office at the Beeb and stuff of that you know what is in fact they shouldn't really trust me as far as they throw me on the our which became the day today TV again you warned in your lectures about analyzing comedy too much seems to be funny but the this the basic joke there I think was that whereas TV news saw itself as questioning Authority yeah it actually had this incredible pompous Authority itself which is what yes you were getting at yes although it wasn't a sort of manifesto you know it's not like the do today was all about bringing down the credibility of all news I think it was there because we just found at the time the pomposity of news and the big graphics of a funny thing to observe and a useful hook and which to hang our visual jokes nearly but it was also very verbally very cute so the attitude they had they had those special serous voices so yes when Chris Chris Morris would read some complete gibberish like headmaster denies using big face boy as satellite dish yes all the rest of it but it's delivered with that incredible that thing that this it's the only note we had in terms of performance which was take it seriously don't don't signal there it's a joke that you know that it's funny and the more seriously you deliver it then the funnier it will be because what would be funny about it is people thinking this this feels real and yet it's complete bollocks the headlines tonight but only refreshed after three days on cross ransoms clockwork dog crosses Atlantic floor and sack chimney sweep pups boss full of mayonnaise we decided then not to have a laughter and you know not to do in front of an audience but to do absolutely straight because the sound of an audience laughing would you know undermine the sort of seriousness so in a way we were self guilty of what we were having a go the news broadcast for in that we took it very seasoned we wanted to take it very seriously we didn't want people to dress up as I can of wacky comedy show the anchorman that Chris Morris would play picked up long before anywhere else did I think on the peculiar aggression with which Jeremy Paxman would say good night at the end of news night but yet is not Paxman it's not because there were elements of you know Mike Birk on $9.99 and his sort of concerned voice and and various you know various other but yes I suppose and there was a slight similar similarity in Luke but it was very again we never sat down and said you know how would Paxman do this it was just a it was just a sort of them tapping into what people perceived as being the trend at the moment in how News was going tomorrow sees the opening of the London Jam festival selling pots of jam summary by celebrities to raise money for the homeless with me as one of the organizers Janet Breen Janet thanks for joining us this evening it's must have taken a heck of a lot of organizing yes what it has actually to get all the celebrities to contribute their jam that's really been quite er quite an operation how much of your time did you put into it oh I would say at least six months six months to raise money for a jam festival isn't that rather stupid no I don't think so I mean it's all in a good cause yeah but how much you gonna raise well we hope to raise some at least fifteen hundred pounds fifteen hundred pounds that's a pathetic amount of money you raise more money by auctioning dogs are you competitive I mean for example the periods when everyone was saying Ricky Gervais Stephen Merchant incredible the office extras was that difficult for you I think what Ricky Gervais has done is is make much more mainstream that kind of writing you know that sort of darker slightly more ambitious look at you know how we behave so I think it's a good thing what I think is a bad thing is everyone else thinking that's therefore how we must make our comedy from now on you know and I've bumped into them often enough it I don't ward so many gone your turn this time is it yep and so it's it's no problem in fact I've you know I've I think I've I've done various articles and so on and on the office and oh it's probably good for us all we talked about the producing side a lot but the other side the return to performing with Friday night Saturday night armistice was that from a frustration and not performing or I don't know it's probably it's probably an element of it it's that of you sort of cuz when I left University I went straight into comedy a bit presented but you know comedy production and you still you know in your sort of late twenties early thirties still have at the back your head well on the back of the envelope it was meant to be you know I'll go to London do some stand-up and see where that gets me so there was probably still a sort of a relic of that plus I really enjoy doing stuff in front of an audience I really enjoy live performing [Applause] [Music] the Tories don't actually have any MPs in Scotland and Wales but angkeran was chosen because he can do accents his Welsh does get a bit Pakistani there is hope for the Tories because last month in Scotland someone did take this picture of the Loch next story which we claim is malcolm rifkind surfacing for air experts say it's a clever hoax and it's actually a monster most comedians say the great thing is producers should just let comedians do what they want give them their head now you said something which was that performers and writers are not necessarily a good judge of what is best for them to do I think that's true and it's it same with me it's right I always when I'm making stuff I always make sure there are other people around and maybe I can send them out get a cut and say what do you think could you go close to it so it's that thing of whatever you're doing I was just making sure there's some sort of checks and balances around there's always another set of eyes and ears who can just stand back same and yeah get fine you're all laughing your heads off of that it is twice as long as it should be you know because it's very difficult to go back to something special if you've slaved away over it and like cut in the thick of it when it started it became it was a standard thing for critics to say that somehow it was a response to Yes Minister Yes Prime Minister it was very much so yeah I had been for some time I've been thinking about doing I kind of slightly on the hoof rough-and-ready very realistic things say in Westminster but it was prompted in the end by my doing a thing for just railing against these top ten shows I was doing here I was doing Britain's best sitcom and I was I did a documentary on Yes Minister which you know obviously always a great fan of anyway and and it just reminded me a how great it was but be how much politics had actually changed since then and there it wasn't about a minister and his civil servants it was all about a minister his advisers the media their relationship and the fact they are controlled by number ten and you know the sort of the the the grammar of politics have changed in its of twenty years or so since yes minister and I met up with Antony Jay who you know one of the writers just was so who sort of spurred me on and encouraged me to to go for it so it was a sort of direct inspiration you know the comparison most people made was that Yes Minister there's a benign Secretariat running the country yeah it's kind of all pretty conservative whereas yours is the presents this middle line spin down to class who are running it it seems much more aggressive much more satirical now you you've questioned that comparison well if you look at Yes Minister you'll actually see how nihilistic it is really in that no one comes out of it very well it's not like the civil servants they are very benign they're quite obstreperous and obstructive it's it's interesting how unoptimized Icke it is as a program yet it's disguised under this British so we'll just bumble along and somehow get through it all atmosphere but it's not not really and and and therefore it's not the exact opposite of of the world portrayed in the thick of it that they are related one's just evolved from the other really so there's enjoy the show you're magnificent darling yes should i phone Keith so that I can get his team to what few bullet me now no no no no I've got my ball I can face on well no this is my ball I can face cracking yes thanks for the pot plant by the way whether that's in there as office-warming this is a crepe yeah isn't she Sam yeah and she always remembers a little people the most own starting the thing for me watching Yes Minister now is the fact that the the party was never specified yes we never knew that party represented now that is a huge difference because thick of it is very specifically an angrily Blair's new labor it is except again we never we never say who the party is but I remember having this conversation with Anthony J saying my intention had been to to say it's a Labour government you know the same way in the West Wing they say he's a Democrat president I just thought it'd be more upfront and and and remember him saying no that's a great mistake don't do that and I'm glad I sort of followed that because yes it's clear what we're modeling ourselves on but I do want the show to feel that it's not it's not a sort of point by point point replication of of who's in government now and it's not seen as having a go at one side of politics it's seen as reflecting how politics generally is works and we can see that with Cameron we can see how he's taken the book that Blair used in 1997 and said carve that please we can see how you know people who work as the I mean that it's not over it's not as overt as it was do you people don't go around happily calling themselves spin doctors anymore but they do to them the likes of Alastair Campbell sort are great heroes you know even if they're Tory spin doctors you know the envy the way he managed to control information and the relationship with the press and the media and have you had any political reaction to it I mean from specifically from well now it's a strange sort of thing because the number of sort of journalists and commentators who have said this is a terribly malign destructive look at politics that is just adding to the general apathy and lack of confidence in you know what our fundamentally good people trying to do their best for the country but other people have said that is sort of balanced and slightly outweighed by the number of sort of former junior and advisors who MPs have come up to me and said I was a lot worse than you can ever imagine you know you're on to something but although you've suggested that yes Prime Minister was perhaps more radical than some people think Margaret Thatcher famously perhaps notoriously she acted a sketch out yes a terrible sight awful I want you to abolish economists abolish economists and quickly you couldn't imagine that happening with new labor could you you couldn't imagine them although I think there was there was an attempt to involve you in a Labour Party conference I wasn't where this was dead 96 so it was the year before blogger in there was a call to the mayor wants to be interviewed by Alan Partridge and the Black Bull Connor friends and clearly because you know Partridge was flavor of the month so it was deemed a good thing to be seen next to Partridge and I went up to Blackpool with Stephen on the way we sort of brought a little 10-minute dialogue comic dialogue between Blair and I'm it do two things happened that were quite striking one was when we arrived Mandelson was furious because he just saw Stephen he said where's Alan Partridge and he had to be Tory he really thought that Alan Partridge where is this Alan Partridge so he was quietly told that Partridge was fictional but the other even more surprises he was like Blair had like 10 minutes to look at this script that was ten minutes long and he sat down he looked at it and saw the jokes he kind of look up to camp will ever know that's it so I see this line about the Year Rosa that all right yep yep and they're down there yep yep and you know that one on anyone only did it work perfectly for ten you know ten ten minutes worth of script he did the jokes absolutely and that scared me shitless really I just thought that is weird that is I wasn't expecting that and that's when I started thinking there's something rather strange about this what business and it was a strange there was a slight evangelical feel to enemy because it was with young people it's a youth rally Alan Partridge knowing you Tony Blair the leader of the Labour Party New Labour what have you call it aha thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed by me why did you agree to do this it's a very good question asking right now well I've heard you were a crazy right-wing guess I thought you may be interested in new labor and we were told you know there'll be questions on Europe the big questions in education you know we know what the questions are you know it'll look like people are you know putting their hands up but we know who the question and lots of young people would put their hand up and stand up and say Tony much as I admire your education policies I wonder where you feel on the subject of grammar you know it was all kind of strangely it was on message it was a rule that was on message basically then that felt slightly sinister but what what's them brings Heather all your work I think is that in each case you've thought quite carefully about how how am I gonna tell this story from building the crates on Alan party yesterday the very loose way in which and the thick of it is sure I think on that I mean you even you tell people to write as quickly as possible improvise and not to over polish it and they think of it yeah because I just want it to feel I want it to feel natural and Fi I don't want it to feel written written so yeah we spent again we spent a lot of time in the plot I then asked the the writers go away and just turn that into script in two days not to spend two months on it but then I go through it line by line and suggest changes and you know things that might happen or what happens in the background and so on and then they'll rewrite it again and then rewrite it so by the time I go into the shoot we're on a fourth or fifth draft anyway so we do always have a script but I am always thinking well how can I make this feel different from other things like it as it where you know side I just have a sort of natural I wanted naturally avoid being told this is how we all was me this is how we always make sitcoms and this is how we always do like a political drama or whatever I'm even think of it I never really knew what was gonna end up like it was all a bit sort of kicked more like scramble and we didn't have much money and we didn't have much time and we just shot it in about four days and you know but I sort of knew once the cast come together I could see that something something was working well they locked me if you always react against conventional wisdom now that everyone is making these loose they must always react against convention because that's you at some point you should react against it by making a conventional family sitcom I suppose a little sitting on the same side of a table we've just done H there yeah Chris Addison is Sam I've just done a a sitcom set in front of God audience which called Lab Rats which is which I've sort of exact produced and Chris Addison is in a sort of research laboratory it's attached to University but it you know it takes money from industry and sponsors to do research and so on but it's a big stupid it is the goodies basically it's it's got stupid cloning jokes and a giant lemon in it and you know it is done in front of an audience and it's very much you know for that and you've said consistently there shouldn't be rules for comedy now there are there is some that are imposed from the top I mean specifically to do with taste in the BBC now you've had some problems with this um I had your edition of time trumpet was all delayed because she fantasized by the assassination of Tony Blair should it I mean are there any taboos for you in comedy well the thing that I don't know is dancer and I'm sort of I I always feel with each project can work out in your head you know where where you draw the line and then at some point cross it just to see what happens and when when have you gone too far well I'm in the end we cut the shot of Blair being assassinated out because it was this in this item called the terrorism Awards and it was saying about 10 or 15 years in the future and so I I thought it was the weakest joke of the three illustrations I thought actually it doesn't you know it doesn't do anything for me and with the war on terror 1 it was time to celebrate and a long hard struggle our three finalists in this category are that fire destroyed a Russia of us in Tel Aviv's main street Dizengoff the attempted attack in London I mean the strength thing was they delayed this terrorism special of time trumpet by a couple of weeks they put another episode a later episode out instead of it but in their rush they hadn't really checked that episode they were Kuriyama it was far worse it is for the programs called rape an ape and stuff it actually got more complaints of the terrors of one but I think we've just relieved that you know we've come to some agreement on terrorism but some some comedians some performers get very angry about giving in at all to any kind of BBC well broadcasting interference but you don't you didn't regard that as a defeat having to lose that that joke no no but I sort of worked out in my own head what what would have been sort of intolerable and what would've been and cutting that joke out not showing the program because it was about terrorism and you would have done what resigned or I don't know I would have gone off in a big hissy fit yeah we'd probably have just gone home said I'm not coming back in my last reference to your Oxford lectures um you raise the specter of this wizened tobacco stained old man of a kind that has hung around Television Centre in the past saying all the comedy was better in my day and all the rest of it and you seen friend of that but what um is there a career plan I mean do you have a sense of the future of what you will do no other than to avoid turning into that kind of complaining miserable oh my programs no longer get commissioned I mean at some point you know at some point they will slob nation yeah yeah yeah I'm sure and I think I've just got to kind of work out what I'll do next and if they do stop commissioning you what would you do write books set up a Germany blog or a block I don't where's the money coming from in a blog I don't I mean it's fine but I don't know I mean I I kind of miss because I've kind of got more and more involved in production so I sort of missed that thing of just writing on my own and and so I suppose you know when I'm taking a shot in the BBC car park and you know no one wants any more by old-fashioned blame media obsessed programs then then maybe I'll write some books or something but I you know I I don't know I'm kind of interested in you know I'd love to make a funny film but I don't want to just make a film for the sake of it so I'm kind of I've kind of got some ideas and so on but you know it'll probably come to nothing thank you very much and thank you the California Dreaming season continues tomorrow when journalist PJ O'Rourke considers the unique role of the Californian governor where fame and politics are one of the same the man in the mansion tomorrow at 9:00 here on BBC Four

Channel: ppotter

Views: 4,050

Rating: 4.7948718 out of 5

Keywords: armando iannucci, alan partridge, day today, on the hour, the thick of it, veep, in the loop, 2007, interview, comedy, mark lawson

Id: NKX_2Xai-1g

Length: 57min 21sec (3441 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2017