Please post questions for Armando Iannucci (Dont, it's done and dusted) [rename]

[Marv Orange]

Are other writers the only people with valid opinions when criticising comedy?

Have you got any recordings of your lectures that you did? If so could you share as the bootlegs were quite bad.

What's your favourite number?

Now that peter seranofinowitz has his own show are we entering a age of comedy performers with difficult to spell surnames?

In the grand scheme of things do you think the Fast Show will be seen as having a detrimental effect on British comedy?

Will the BBC ever stop hyping the tits off disappointing comedy shows?

[Beck]

What were the writing sessions for The Day Today like? I've read that, for On the Hour, Chris Morris pretty much went off and did his own thing - writing and performing his own sketches and links independently. Was this the same for The Day Today or was it a much more collaborative process?

[Sparrow]

With his obvious love of literature, has he ever considered writing fiction?

Does he want to do any non-comedy projects in the future and, if so, does he find writing comedy inhibiting to writing non-comedy work?  (People tend to ask questions along this line with a sense of "are you worried as a comedy writer you won't be taken seriously?" but what I find more interesting, and more of a real problem for people going between the two is that writing comedy can make any "serious" writing attempt seem [especially to the writer *themselves*] to be ridiculously po-faced or pompous when held up next to the comedy)

Er, hope that makes sense.  Good luck n' all.

[Darrell]

Ask him what happened to his abandoned capitalism-satirising 'Tongue International' novel that was scheduled for publishing about five years ago.

[Ja'moke]

I second the question...Are there any plans of working with Peter Baynham again in the future?

And also...

Are there any plans of a DVD release of Armistice, Mary Whitehouse Experience etc? (you could even add Fist Of Fun to that, although he didn't work on it he has worked with Lee & Herring and Fist Of Fun deserves a DVD release).

[idunnosomename]

If all the Mahler symphonies had a fight which one would win

[Smeraldina Rima]

When you were on Radio 4's A Good Read you weren't very impressed by Samuel Beckett's Murphy, and said you didn't likemuch of that school of Irish writing apart from Flann O'Brian. Since a lot of modern comedy from the Goons to The Mighty Boosh is influenced in various ways by surrealism and stylistic deconstruction, do you find this influence inhibits your enjoyment in any way, or is TV and radio comedy a more appropriate genre for that style of writing?

You also didn't like the Raymond Carver story Why Honey? for its glib political ending. Do you like political comedy generally, and what do you think is bad political comedy?

That's dissapointing to hear. Mind, apart from crazy James Joyce, who else is in that particular school? Generally interested if you have someone to endorse, i always thought of it as a great trilogy of writers. Anyway, it seems to me that Iannucci, particularly in the AI Shows, is actually the most surreal and stylistically deconstructive of comedians. I also think that O'Brien is easily the more postmodern of himself and Beckett, so i don't imagine it was a distaste for those features you mention per se, rather an inexplicable issue with some other aspect of Murphy. Can you remember why he didn't like it? Jesus, how could you not like it!

Questions: I third the P. Baynham one. (I had a dream last week in which I met somebody, and said 'which comedians do you like?' And they said - like would never happen in real life, but I was still slightly embarassed to have it manifested as a fantasy of mine - 'I really like Peter Baynham'. 'Oh, have you heard the King Stupid shows' etc...and then i woke up. It was all a dream.)

[Robot DeNiro]

Iannucci's audio cut ups are often superb, and I'd like to know how much they have influenced his other work, especially On The Hour.  Morris's delivery sounded a lot like an audio cut up, with stresses in the wrong place and sudden changes of tone.  Also the content of the actual lines frequently relied on mismatching incongruous elements, an obvious cut and paste technique. 

Basically if you cut up the news it always ends up sounding like On The Hour, and I've often wondered if any of the scripts were written by editing actual news footage.

[Village Branson]

When will we see another series of Friday Night Armistice*?

*read: satire studio show
(best not mention gash)

[brrrr]

Regarding my Alan Partridge Questions ,ask him if he and Coogan ever felt like taking Partridge back to his roots on the radio ,something more in the style of how the character once was instead of a Partridge movie that we all know would be terrible.

[23 Daves]

I realise it's digging up a very worn topic, but I'd genuinely be interested to hear his views on the Brasseye Special.  I'm sure he said in an interview some years ago that it wasn't a "satire" at all, and he didn't seem especially keen to defend it.  Therefore, I'd like to hear his take on what Morris was trying to do, and what his feelings on the programme are now that all the dust has settled.

Oh, and interview advice... erm... I don't consider myself an expert, and you probably know all this already, but... it is about striking a balance between being business-like and being friendly.  You're not mates with the subject, but nonetheless you have to be chatty with them as early on as you can manage to get good results, because you probably won't have the luxury of time on your side.  As has already been mentioned, being fawning won't usually bother the interviewee at all, but it will mean that you won't necessarily get the most interesting results out of the process. 

Save the more difficult questions for a point in the procedure when you feel instinctively that they're OK to ask - perhaps when the subject is being more open and talkative, and some sort of minor bond of trust has been established.  Phrase them tactfully, and use clauses like "Some people have said" (which in this case would be true) or "It could be said that"* to take the personal slant out of them a bit.  It is possible with some interviewees to start a great big battle up and get fantastic results from it, but most people will just clam up or even call a halt to the proceedings early if they think the interview is too critical and aggressive in tone.  It's never pleasant to be sat opposite somebody you don't know who is busy tearing your work to shreds or trawling over your mistakes, irrespective of fame.  Politicians and really controversial public figures will be used to this approach, but most other people won't.

Another thing I've almost always found helps is if you can manage to have a few minutes of smalltalk beforehand, just to break the ice.  Sometimes they'll be keen just to get on with the interview, but it makes life a hell of a lot easier if you've managed to present yourself as a friendly person rather than an inquisitor, and they've managed to present themselves as being an ordinary human being rather than somebody you're in awe of.  Don't think "If I mention what an odd morning I've had they'll think I sound like a pedestrian idiot" - I think silly details like that early on can really help interviews.  The temptation is always to try and impress people you admire with witty observations or say things you think they'd like to hear, but really you've got to leave it up to them to do the impressing and accept your role as the person who is getting the best out of them. 

Also - if you're not used to interviewing people, I personally don't think you should be afraid to admit your inexperience and/or awe early on.  It got me out of numerous early holes as the moods and attitudes of the interviewees softened when they realised that I was a complete rookie.  It also comes with the added bonus that total rookies very rarely have negative agendas, so that can relax the subject a bit more too.  That said, I think my journalism lecturers at college really disagreed with me on this one.  It depends who you're talking to.  It wouldn't wash with Madonna, but I doubt Armando would be an arsehole about it.

I have it on good authority that Armando's is a lovely and personable chap, so I don't think there will be any awkwardness anyway, Neil.

(*most people aren't dummies and will know damn well that some of the questions will actually be your opinion, but it's always nice to give them the option of thinking that you're just doing your job by putting forward alternative viewpoints).

[Saucer51]

Any more Patridge? He's morphing quite revoltingly into middle age and I feel there's a lot more material there!

You seem like a fairly calm and ordinary person. How can you write from the perspectives of such volatile (Malcolm Tucker) or such damaged (Alan Patridge) characters?

Do you think the money ploughed into the Olympic Games could be better spent?

Considering they share our language and have no excuse, what do you think of the American tendency to import British programmes but remake them with American actors?

What parts of your psyche are more Italian than British?

[Jemble Fred]

Another thing I've almost always found helps is if you can manage to have a few minutes of smalltalk beforehand, just to break the ice. 

Ha – Skype's ideal for that – Neil will no doubt spend at least five minutes triple checking that it's all working right and AI's happy with the noise etc.

[MojoJojo]

I've always wanted to know who the bizarre Barber character in the Armando Iannucci Shows were based on as during a signing session at the Dancehouse in Manchester for his book 'Facts and Fancies' I asked him if he thought that beardless Jeremy Beadle resembled Fred West, to which as you'd expect he stared at me blankly, asked if I was a stalker and then said he would use it somewhere if I wanted.

From what I remember of my brother saying about the interview, and I think it's on the commentaries to TAIS, the barber is inspired by his own experiences going to the barber when going to university. His mum always cut his hair before so he found the experience quite strange. And he had a conversation which went something like:
Barber: Do you believe in reincarnation?
Armando: Not really.
Barber: Well I believe I am the reincarnation of Romulus and Remus.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Can you say "Hello, Hugh!" for me, please?

[Uncle TechTip]

I was listening to an edition of radio bloopers show "Can I Take That Again" from 1989 and was surprised to hear "produced by AI" at the end. Ask him if working on this show influenced his future direction in comedy in any way, and also how much influence the particular forms of cock-up had on his style, as many of the clips reminded me of On The Hour; producers heard through talkback, tapes slowing down etc. Was it this show which made him take the career direction he did?

[DuncanC]

Can you say "Hello, Hugh!" for me, please?

It's a cold and it's a broken... "Hello, Hugh!"

1913-2004

[LeboviciAB84]

As a humorous type, making the Ripostes Secreted In Pies sketch from The Armando Iannucci Shows must've been a painful experience. Did you not give a second thought to your reputation?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

It's a bit of a tightrope, selecting questions. Make them too broad and you can more or less predict what he'll say (which applies to a lot of the questions proposed so far in this thread), but ask really specific things and he just won't remember.

Asking the 'stars' of shows for nuggets of interesting info often isn't fruitful - their memories are hopeless and you have to take everything with a pinch of salt. If you want the truth about radio/TV shows, either (a) go to the Written Archives Centre or (b) ask the engineers.

It is tempting to seek the truth on a few specific things, like who blocked the TDT commentary. But if the answer is 'Fucking Chris Morris', he's not going to tell you.

Ask him about planned TDT items which just didn't work out. He must be able to recall a few.

 

[Little Hoover]

By the way, how did you arrange this interview Neil?

[Paaaaul]

Also remember, he or one of his minions reads this board.........

[Jemble Fred]

How does one become an Iannucci minion? Does he also have a throne?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

No ideas yet, but my brother interviewed him about 6 months a go, and was given strong warnings not to mention Chris Langham

Warnings from Iannucci himself?

[Marv Orange]

What can he say about langham that going to be a surprise apart from those photos were grrreat!

[23 Daves]

Did AI write that planned segment of the Day Today about the critics and writers who were locked in a room together until the millenium?  I always wondered why that was left out of the final programmes, as I think it's brilliant, and also seems to be very much in his style. 

[Tommy Trumpet]

This is a fairly obvious one, but I think it's an interesting point of discussion.
Given his obvious love of Yes, Minister (as he talked it up in that BBC 'best sitcom' show), how does he feel about the fact that these days it is looked back on fondly by politicians? I presume he would feel it was a genuinely angry show that exposed some things to the public - but does he think it made any difference? Even when it was still running it was admired by politicians, as far as I know. It was such a joke seeing Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy present it as winner of "top [howevermany] political comedies", and then various MPs reminiscing about it.

and so linked to this... as The Thick of It is clearly intended as a kind of unofficial successor to Yes, Minister - is it intended to make people angry? Does he think it's having any kind of impact? Do politicians like it?

I haven't expressed it very eloquently but something about that would be interesting.

[duckorange]

The last time I met Armando he was wearing a tattered tank top. Has his fashion sense improved any?

[The Boston Crab]

Which comic actors does he see as successors to the TDT crew?

What did he make of Nathan Barley?

What does he think about the American comedy 'team writing' set-up?

In the last ten years of UK comedy, why have we not seen the depth of writing and acting offered by US shows such as Arrested Development?

[MojoJojo]

Warnings from Iannucci himself?

No, from the PR bods themselves, although i got the impression it was because Iannucci didn't want to talk about it. The interview was for the DVD release of TAIS, so it is possible they wanted to keep the focus on that rather than get sidetracked into Chris Langham stuff.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

I'd like to hear his views on his older stuff now, how he think they'd be recieved, anything that in retrospect he would have changed, the AI shows, Facts and Fancies, and the radio shows he presented.
Any stories about his early career in radio would be amazing. I'm kind of interested in stories from the writing of TDT etc, anything from that period.
But yeah, stuff about where he thinks comedy is going in the next decade +, and/or where he wants it to go. How can UK comedy change for the better? What he thinks new comedians should be targeting and parodying, does he rate modern American stuff (South Park for example) higher than the British equivalent?
Nice work getting the interview Neil. From that phone interview that was posted a year or so back he seems as nice as his media persona implies so I would say it should be great fun speaking to him, good luck.