Creator of 'The Thick of It' is depressed by success at No 10

Armando Iannucci, the creator of the political satire, The Thick of It, said it was "depressing" to hear that Downing Street had requested a set of recordings of the series.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs yesterday, he said the Prime Minister's office had asked for the award-winning comedy for Christmas. The highly acclaimed show is about a hapless minister who is constantly harassed by the spin doctor at No 10.

"It may be that they asked for the recordings and then said that they didn't like it. In fact, someone in the Treasury said, 'We love it but the guys at No 10, they are all going, 'Well actually, if we did leak a story we'd leak it to the Evening Standard before The World at One, not afterwards'," he said.

Iannucci also said his inspiration for the show came from the war in Iraq.

"I was very much against the war. I thought it was going to be disastrous, and behold it was," he said.

"It did make me think again about looking at how politics works today, and how we end up getting ourselves into positions which any Martians would tell us from the outside are ridiculous."