- "He has gone Glenn–tal"
- ―Adam Kenyon
Glenn Cullen, also known as Michael in In the Loop, is a character in The Thick of It. He was Hugh Abbot's chief adviser and friend and later became Senior Adviser to Hugh's replacement Nicola Murray, he continued to work in DoSAC after the coalition government came to power.
Glenn is the Senior Special Adviser in the department - he's never worked anywhere else. Hugh Abbot regarded him as 'his guy' they go back a long way and were even slightly homoerotic in the degree to which their careers and lives were bound together. However Hugh is gone now how will Glenn cope with new minister Nicola Murray.
Glenn very much senses that the whole department is living on borrowed time and thus is quite insecure.
Cullen thinks of himself as a red hot advisor - he sees himself as the source of all good common sense and believes he instinctively knows how the man on the street thinks.
Ollie suspects Glenn has no life outside work. Certainly no sex life since his divorce. Still there's always England Cricket on the wireless.
Series Four saw the end of Glenn's career, after he accidentally leaked some files about the jokes his colleagues created about the unstable nurse Douglas Tickel, this lead to an enquiry and whilst Glenn hadn't been found out, he was paranoid that he would be sniffed out eventually, so he cut up his ID card he needed to get into the building, and decided to hand himself over to the police, but changed his mind at the last moment.
Behind the Scenes
- Glenn is played by James Smith.