Armando Iannucci

“My 11-year-old thinks I'm cool because he watches things I've made on YouTube.”

“There is still an element of the BBC that feels it is somehow wrong, or it will be open to criticism, if it makes more money.”

“When I'm making something, I've always felt in charge and therefore able to call the shots. But what you've got to do is stop that turning into arrogance or despotism!”

“I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.”

“Never underestimate the intelligence of the audience; make good programmes, and they will come.”

“I am an optimist even though I am told everything I do is negative and cynical.”

“I assume everyone around me is older because they look more responsible.”

“I started quite young at school, compering a charity event at an old people's home. I would do stand up and impressions and enjoyed the laughter. It's very addictive. It's a lovely sensation to say something and hear a whole room laugh.”

“Joe Biden is that special combination of someone who is very talented and influential, but when he starts speaking, there's inevitably going to be headlines written about something he said.”

“I hate the idea of labels and saying you are member of one party or another and signing up to all sorts of policies that you don't have a view on or don't believe in. Because I'm not a politician, I don't have to be consistent in what I say and how I behave.”

“Any performer tries to perform music as if for the first time, with all that energy and excitement that comes from discovering a new piece--maybe trying to recreate the memory of falling in love with a piece when hearing it first as a child--and just as people regularly say of a brilliant conductor that they seem to conduct as if recreating the energy an audience must have felt when the piece was first played decades, even centuries, before, so too I think we need to communicate our knowledge with the passion we first encountered as children.”

“I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner, I put a line through the words and make them meet for lunch.”

“When I started off, I always used to do parodies and impressions, mimicking people... and then institutions. You become aware that some institutions have their own language. You almost define yourself by how you speak.”

“The busier you are, the less time you have to make decisions.”

“The last thing I want to do is use my comedy as a partisan tool or as a method for preaching.”

“Governments, whether right or left, have become commissioners-in-chief, nudging and cajoling networks into preferred business models without the slightest sensitivity or awareness of what the public wants or the TV industry is capable of.”

“I briefly thought of becoming a priest but quickly saw that would be ridiculous.”

“When you do a movie as opposed to a TV show, it's always tempting to think everything has to be big and exaggerated and spectacular. And in fact, a lot of the funniest comedy films have been very intimate.”