Armando Iannucci has said that he would cast a stuffed animal as Boris Johnson if he were to ever make a film about the Prime Minister.

The creator of political satires including The Thick Of It and The Death Of Stalin said he would eschew a human actor in favour of “the animal that shits the most”.

The writer and director, 56, told the PA news agency: “I would probably use small animals. Just stuffed animals. The smaller the better. The animal that shits the most.”

The Andrew Marr SHow
Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Jeff Overs/BBC/PA)

He spoke at the British Independent Film Awards (Bifas) where his film based on the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield leads the nominations with 11 nods.

He said The Personal History Of David Copperfield, which uses colour-blind casting and stars Dev Patel as the title character, is an expression of the “open and generous and eccentric and funny” British identity.

He told the PA news agency: “It’s Dickens and it is set in 1840 but I wanted to stay away from it being a costume drama.

BFI London Film Festval
Dev Patel as David Copperfield (Lionsgate UK/PA)

“I wanted people in it to behave like it was present day.

“I wanted the casting and feel to be like we were filming it now because for the characters in the film it’s their present day.

“They are living their lives in their present.

“But also I wanted to say something about… It’s an expression of what I believe Britishness is, which is actually something that is open and generous and eccentric and funny, rather than closed and isolationist and withdrawn, which is the language we are hearing at the moment in certain other quarters.

“I wanted to challenge that really. You get various descriptions of what people feel.

“But fundamentally once all the dust settles we will be what we have always been – which is a very open, generous, humorous, friendly nation.”