3: Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)

For a long time, that man Coogan seemed to have an air of sweaty desperation about his desire for big screen success (a public perception satirised in both A Cock and Bull Story and the actor’s scene opposite Alfred Molina in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes). But when it came to transferring his principal alter-ego, Alan Partridge, from TV to movies, he kept his cool like a frozen sperm.

Forget packing North Norfolk Digital’s finest off to the States; Coogan and his collaborators instead cooked up a smaller scale and entirely satisfying story, complete with roles for telly cohorts Lynn, Sidekick Simon and lovable Geordie lunatic Michael. Most importantly, the majority of the jokes – from Alan’s opening Roachford mime onwards – landed as successfully as Neil Armstrong.

2: Borat (2006)

A testing little turd of a film, the biggest problem with Ali G Indahouse is it completely ignored the thing which made its title character so funny to start with: namely, the balls-out brazenness of actor Sacha Baron Cohen as he baited his unsuspecting co-stars.

But, like the late, great George W. Bush, Baron Cohen wasn’t about to get fooled again – and sure enough, when it came to the movie iteration of his crazed Kazakh persona, Borat, he played to his strengths and scored a global hit. He also gave us the mankini, the unceasingly hilarious accoutrement for every d*ckhead stag/bachelor party the world over.

1: In the Loop (2009)

With small screen successes including The Thick of It and Veep to his name, as well as collaborations with Coogan, Morris, amongst many, many others, writer-director-producer Armando Ianucci has his fingers in more comedy pies than Max Clifford has had his fingers in… [er, cough, splutter! Let’s just leave it at that, eh sonny! – Movie-Moron Legal Department].

It was The Thick of It, his now-retired satire of Westminster politics, which formed the basis of In the Loop, Ianucci’s to-date sole cinematic outing behind the camera. Tom Hollander stars as a hapless politician, while Peter Capaldi reprises his TV role as volcanic spin-demon Malcolm Tucker. Hell, James Gandolfini even shows up, only to be ripped by Tucker for being a butterball.

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