Age: 62
male
Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish-Italian comedian, satirist, writer, director, performer and radio producer. Born in Glasgow, he studied at Oxford University and left graduate work on a PhD about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy. Rising quickly through BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour was transferred to television as The Day Today. A character from this series, Alan Partridge, went on to feature in a number of Iannucci's television and radio programmes including Knowing Me, Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge. In the meantime, Iannucci also fronted the satirical Armistice review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, The Armando Iannucci Shows for Channel 4. Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom The Thick of It as well as the spoof documentary Time Trumpet in 2006. Winning funding from the UK Film Council, he directed a critically acclaimed feature film In the Loop featuring characters from The Thick of It in 2009. As a result of these works, he has been being described by The Daily Telegraph as "the hardman of political satire".[2] Other works during this period include a operetta libretto, Skin Deep and his radio series Charm Offensive. He is currently working on a U.S. political satire for HBO called Veep.
During the Second Continental Congress, currently underway in Philadelphia, the motion to declare the colonies' independence from Great Britain, introduced by John Adams, a delegate from Massachusetts, is not debated, preferring to address more trivial matters. Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania, strategically suggests that he have another delegate propose the resolution. The choice falls on the impetuous and extroverted Richard Henry Lee, who accepts and returns to Virginia to obtain authorization from the state legislature. Having overcome the first hurdle, Lee's new motion faces objections from John Dickinson, a delegate from Pennsylvania and leader of the conservative faction inclined to reconciliation with Great Britain, who manages to obtain a unanimous quorum given the importance of the independence motion. Adams, to gain time to seek greater consensus, requests a postponement for the drafting of a declaration of injustice, entrusted to a committee of five delegates, but in reality the drafting is entrusted almost entirely to Thomas Jefferson, delegate from Virginia.
