You might expect someone with a name like Armando Iannucci to hail from Little Italy or to be some sort of refugee from the notorious Glasgow ice-cream wars, writes GEORGE FREW. And Armando does indeed belong to Glasgow - but his Italian dad owned a pizza factory, his mother was a hairdresser and he read English at University College, Oxford, before returning north, where he got his first break on Radio Scotland.

Since when, of course, this 33-year old writer and performer has had a string of comedy successes and won a clutch of awards for shows like The Saturday Night Armistice, The Day Today and the sublime Knowing Me, Knowing You... With Alan Partridge.

He's part of a comedy creative pool that includes Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Peter Baynham and David Schneider, although when he's on the road he writes alone.

His one-man show, Out of his Box, comes to Oxford's Old Fire Station for two performances on Saturday. "The shows are a continuation of what I was doing last May," he explains. "They're a chance for me to make contact with the people who watch the TV programmes and listen to the radio stuff. I try to do something different every night and to avoid the feeling that it's stand-up - sort of 'Well, here I am and here's my 100 jokes.' I mean, I've got prepared material but I also take questions from the audience and they determine the shape the show will take on the night.

"The idea is that the audience come away thinking they've seen something as funny as stand-up, but more conversational. Generally, I prefer anecdotal-type comedy - people like Billy Connolly and Woody Allen."

His publicity describes the show as an opportunity to "Hear, talk to and intimidate a shy man."

Shy?

"Well, I'm OK once I'm onstage, I can ramble on for three hours, no bother. But at parties, I don't bound around the room. I tend to slink into the corner instead." He says he prefers writing in collaboration rather than on his own. "When you're by yourself, there's no-one to bounce ideas off and you have to be hyper-critical. But I'm mates with the people I write with. We all knew each other early on and had the same sense of humour. You can't collaborate with someone you feel no warmth towards. There's no pressure to try and make each other laugh, so it's not like work."

Perhaps Iannucci and Coogan's most popular comic creation to date has been the wonderfully naff Alan Partridge, who evolved from a voice.

"I asked Steve to do a sports presenter and he came out with this voice. Once we had that, we knew Partridge's life story. In a sense, he's easy to write about, because you know what he'll do and say in any given situation and so you just let him dig himself into deeper holes. A lot of the stuff I do is just stupid - there's no message with Partridge. Once you start trying to affect things, you're in breach of the comedy trades description act. I'd prefer it if people thought about the stuff I do, but if I don't make them laugh, I've failed." Much of Iannucci's material borders on the surreal. He says, for example, that Foreign Secretary Robin Cook is "big in Turkey."

"I was there on holiday and people kept asking me things like what Claire Short was up to," he claims, poker-faced.

"And on August 14 every year, there's a Robin Cook Festival when all these little kids get dressed up in ginger beards and start making speeches about selling arms to Indonesia and things. Then they bake a giant cake - in the shape of a hypocrite..."

His low boredom threshold has led him to bring Saturday Night Armistice to an end. Partridge will be back, but at the moment Iannucci is writing a comedy film and attempting to come up with a new TV project for next year.

Added to which, he'll continue to broadcast regularly on radio because, "I have loyalty to radio - I owe everything to it and I'm a fan of radio comedy."

Armando Iannucci has been described as "the ringleader of the most creative group of comedians to emerge in British broadcasting this decade".

On Saturday, the ringleader performs alone. I suspect you will not be disappointed.

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