List of The Thick of It characters

The Thick of It is a British television comedy programme that premiered in 2005 on BBC Four. The series satirises the inner workings of modern British government. It follows the running of a fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, and most episodes focus on that department's incumbent minister and a core cast of advisors and civil servants, under the watchful eye of Number 10's enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). The supporting characters include people in government, in the opposition, and in the media.

Tucker is the aggressive, profane and feared Director of communications for the Government. He serves two main roles: acting as the party enforcer to ensure the cabinet ministers all follow the party line, and managing the government's crisis management PR - usually in the form of spin. He regularly uses rumours, smears, or threats of extreme violence to achieve his ends. He is usually seen talking to various people on his mobile.

His reputation precedes him in his own party, the media and even among the opposition. One of the members of the Goolding Inquiry summarizes some of the comments made about him in Series 4, Episode 6: "Malcolm Tucker has the physical demeanour and the political instincts of a velociraptor" (The Guardian); "Tucker's writ runs through the lifeblood of Westminster like raw alcohol, at once cleansing and corroding" (The Daily Telegraph); "If you make eye contact with Malcolm Tucker, you have spilled his pint (The Times); "Iago with a BlackBerry" (The Spectator). In Series 3, Episode 5 Peter Mannion also refers to him as the "Gorbals Goebbels", ostensibly a reference to Tucker's place of origin. Incidentally, neither his fierce reputation nor his permanent leverage over the media and the Government prevent him from being routinely teased and taunted about his ethnicity, even by subordinates such as Ollie and Terri.

...
Wikipedia