1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Britain's most celebrated
constitutional comedy,

2
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister, is back.

3
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I don't know what else I don't know,
do you know?

4
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The prospect of a new series of
Yes, Prime Minister set today

5
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is fantastic.
As Tony Blair would say,

6
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"It's very, very,
very good news, ha ha ha ha ha!"

7
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They really do say,
"Yes, Prime Minister."

8
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There's a hungry audience
out there for it,

9
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I think it will
absolutely chime.

10
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
GOLD has enticed the original
writers, Jonathan Lynn

11
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and Antony Jay, to write
a brand-new series...

12
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think it's fun.

13
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I really think we're going
to enjoy the experience.

14
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
..with a brand-new cast...

15
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I love playing the character,

16
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because he reminds me
slightly of Boris Johnson.

17
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Am I allowed to say that?

18
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Because Boris Johnson,
incredibly shrewd at times.

19
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I think there's
a bit of that in Jim Hacker.

20
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
..and some very special guest
stars...

21
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Hi, I'm George Clooney!

22
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
..because there's never been
a better time to bring back

23
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
this ground-breaking
tale of political chicanery.

24
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There's a way you can make
yourself invulnerable!

25
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister,

26
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the sitcom that lifted the lid on
the inner workings of government,

27
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is finally making a triumphant
return to our screens

28
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
after 25 years.

29
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It'll be great to see it coming back

30
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and see how they've how
that programme can relate

31
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to the changing world of politics

32
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the changing world
of entertainment.

33
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it will remind Humphrey
who's running the country.

34
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's gonna give us a fresh,
fresh light,

35
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and is going to be very,
very enjoyable.

36
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's bound to strike a chord,
because people realise it's true.

37
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In fact, it was so true to life
that when Yes, Prime Minister

38
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
first aired in the '80s,
the Iron Lady was most amused.

39
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The odd thing about
Yes, Prime Minister is that it was

40
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the favourite programme of Margaret
Thatcher, the Prime Minister.

41
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'Do you watch Yes, Prime Minister?'
Oh!

42
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, I do watch Yes, Prime Minister,
but sometimes not when it's on.

43
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It can be videoed for me,
or the BBC are very,

44
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
very kind
and will let me have the tape.

45
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Mrs Thatcher once said to me,

46
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"This is not a sitcom, Andrew."
She said, "This is a documentary."

47
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Basically, I think the reason
that Mrs Thatcher liked it

48
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was because it was politically
correct for her to do so.

49
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was one of the most
popular programmes,

50
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and she was trying to jump
on the bandwagon,

51
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
as far as I was concerned.

52
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
She was inclined, from time to time,
to think that only

53
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
she was any good, and the rest
of her ministers were useless.

54
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And therefore to some extent,
this fed into that.

55
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Now, any other points
that we wish to raise,

56
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
generally, before we go on
to the main business?

57
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
JONATHAN LYNN: I didn't like
it being associated with her,

58
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because I wasn't wholly
sympathetic to her political views

59
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I didn't want it to
put off the rest of the country

60
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
or the people who didn't like her.

61
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But I was absolutely
in favour of her views,

62
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I don't think that we've come
to an agreement about this.

63
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We've never come
to an agreement on that.

64
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I just wanted to make it clear that
you didn't have to be a Thatcherite

65
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to like this programme, nor was it
projecting a Tory viewpoint...

66
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, that was...

67
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
..which a lot of people
claim that it was.

68
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Although there was
one young Tory who disagreed.

69
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In fact, during his uni days,

70
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he wrote an essay saying
it wasn't that true to life.

71
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But after two years in power

72
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and with a wealth of experience
behind him,

73
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Cameron has finally conceded
that yes,

74
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister
has got it right.

75
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The fact David Cameron has said that
yes, it is basically like that

76
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
only really confirms why people love
that show as much as they do.

77
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Our new series sees Jim Hacker
heading up a crumbling

78
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
coalition government
whilst battling a catastrophic

79
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
euro crisis, financial meltdown,
and a bid for Scottish independence.

80
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You can propose as many alternatives
as you like in your referendum.

81
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Good.

82
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We will propose
only one option in ours.

83
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We're in the age where we have
a coalition government

84
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which is
increasingly fighting among itself.

85
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We're at a time when politicians
don't quite know what to do.

86
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think you add all these things
together, and you see

87
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the re-emergence, the second
coming of Sir Humphrey Appleby.

88
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I have caught you red-handed
in a devious attempt to inveigle us

89
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
into the Eurozone behind my back.

90
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, well, yes, but...

91
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
To explore how
Yes, Prime Minister has shaped

92
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
our view of government,

93
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
we've put together our very own

94
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Select Committee
for Comedy Analysis.

95
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It consists of Tory titan

96
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Michael Heseltine,

97
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
former Labour heavyweight
Alan Johnson,

98
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Lib Dem deputy leader
Simon Hughes,

99
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
ex-Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell -
or Sir Humphrey to me and you -

100
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and none other than Tony Blair's
former Spin Doctor,

101
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Alastair Campbell.

102
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So here we are talking about

103
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is this the right time to revive
Yes, Minister

104
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
when first peace-time
coalition...

105
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
country in economic
difficulties, euro crisis,

106
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Scotland talking about a vote
on independence...

107
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What do you think?
Your party, first time in

108
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
government for a very long time.

109
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think it makes for, in theory,
a much more interesting set

110
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of programmes
even than the original,

111
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because one-party government
is interesting enough,

112
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but two-party government,
by definition,

113
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is much more interesting, because
it's not just the internal management

114
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of your own people, but it's
the relationship between the two.

115
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, absolutely.
When I was brought up...

116
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, you described
Yes, Minister as a...comedy.

117
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We were taught it as
a training video.

118
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know, this was
how you managed your ministers.

119
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, I've been in episodes
of Yes, Minister.

120
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know, when I was at Trade
and Industry, and Tony appointed me

121
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and said, "Oh, incidentally,
we've changed the name of it -

122
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"it's now the Department
of Productivity, Energy..."

123
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which was capital E, small N
"..Industry and Science."

124
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
PEnIS.

125
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I said, "I'm the Secretary
of State for PEnIS!"

126
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And...and this was on a Sunday.
On the Wednesday,

127
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I went to see Tony in Number Ten,
and he said, "Are you OK, Alan?

128
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"You know, all this...

129
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"pretty straight
nuclear policy...?"

130
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I said, "I don't like being
in the Department of PEnIS."

131
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he said, "Whose idea was that?"

132
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he looked round,
and, "Oh, not mine!"

133
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was his Press Secretary!

134
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was certainly was not!

135
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Alistair had gone by then!

136
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So we had to change,
so DTI had come down,

137
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and it was blank outside 1
Victoria Street, I can remember it.

138
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And they were just about to put
PEnIS up, and fortunately

139
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I managed to persuade the Prime
Minister we'd go back to being DTI.

140
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean it's an episode
of Yes, Minister.

141
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They couldn't have got,

142
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
they couldn't have invented that,
could they? No!

143
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
When Jim Hacker left our screens
in 1988, Jonathan Lynn hotfooted it

144
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to Hollywood to become
an award-winning film director.

145
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Antony Jay swapped the city
for the country to continue writing.

146
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Now GOLD has persuaded them

147
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to bring Yes, Prime Minister
back to our screens.

148
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's as good a time as any
to revive Yes, Prime Minister.

149
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Nothing has changed,
except cosmetically,

150
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
since it was first on in 1980.

151
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Our very limited ambition
was to write six funny shows

152
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
about what
happens in Whitehall.

153
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But we stumbled across a rich
vein of humour and public interest.

154
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it was extraordinarily
fortunate, but the result of it

155
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is that...there's never
a shortage of things to write about.

156
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Collapse of conference,
collapse of backbench support,

157
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
collapse of coalition, collapse
of cabinet, collapse of my career!

158
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
This is the biggest disaster
since Dunkirk!

159
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It is very much
a continuation of the original.

160
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And we've got two absolutely
marvellous characters,

161
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
er, playing Jim and Humphrey,

162
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which I think will be
an eye-opener to people,

163
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
not that they're better than Paul
and Nigel, but they're different,

164
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but they're really very,
very well observed and very funny.

165
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'It's obviously
extraordinarily gratifying

166
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'to have created characters

167
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'that seem to have become
part of the vocabulary.

168
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'It didn't occur to us, I think,
that we were doing that.'

169
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We didn't set out to change
the world, we just set out to...

170
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
To amuse an audience.
..to amuse an audience.

171
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Stepping into the Prime Ministerial
role of Jim Hacker

172
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is acting legend David Haig,

173
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
whilst his calculating
Cabinet Secretary, Sir Humphrey,

174
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is played by renowned stage
and screen actor, Henry Goodman.

175
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
HENRY GOODMAN: I'm genuinely excited
that these scripts have embraced

176
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
new and edgy stuff.

177
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Some of the things that happen
in these episodes

178
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
would not have been in previous
episodes

179
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
some years ago.

180
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Why didn't you know?

181
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, everybody thought that
everybody else understood

182
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
what was going on.

183
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Nobody wanted to admit that
they couldn't make sense of it.

184
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Why couldn't they?

185
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Because it didn't make sense!

186
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The balance between Sir Humphrey
and Jim Hacker

187
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
has evolved through
the two of us playing the two roles,

188
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and that necessarily has some
differences from our predecessors.

189
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But I think they're exciting
differences, and I'm not scared

190
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of Nigel and Paul's performances,
which were absolutely phenomenal.

191
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And also, Henry and I have known
each other for so long, it's fun

192
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to investigate our own histories,
in a way, subliminally, I feel.

193
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Within the characters. Yeah.

194
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
How happy is the Prime Minister
about his future?

195
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He's as happy as a rat-catcher
on a rubbish dump.

196
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The Prime Minister is as happy
as an Environmental Health Officer

197
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
on a Civic Amenity Site.

198
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was absolutely terrified when
they offered me Bernard originally,

199
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
simply because
I watched the original TV series,

200
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
back in the 1980s.
I was doing my A-level politics

201
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I was really rather...in awe.

202
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What about Bernard?

203
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Now, he is the kind of character
I'm really sympathetic to,

204
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and of all of them the three
of them, I've seen Bernards.

205
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Absolutely.
Over and over again.

206
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Indeed, and they are, you know,
I think people underestimate

207
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the power of every Minister's
Private Secretary.

208
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's not the reality of the
Civil Service now, you know,

209
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
you'd be much more likely to have
a Bernadette

210
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
than a...than a Bernard.

211
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Quiet, please... Although Bernard
is still very much a bloke,

212
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
there is a welcome addition

213
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of a female SPAD - Claire Sutton,
Special Political Advisor to Jim.

214
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'She's kind of like his right-hand
man, really.

215
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
'And she's very good at kind
of thinking straight'

216
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
in stressful situations

217
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and, you know, just...being cogent.

218
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He's not doing that. If I could
mention the Kumranistan loan!

219
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You can't!

220
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Not until Kumranistan has definitely
signed on the dotted line

221
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and not until this euro business

222
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
with the European Central bank
is sorted out.

223
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Phone them back.
Pretend to be helpful.

224
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It'd be very nice to see
a woman SPAD.

225
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And Zoe Telford is a fantastic
actress, she's really good

226
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and she's just got a great
kind of energy about her

227
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and a real intelligence as well.

228
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think she'll be great. Yeah, I
think she'll run rings around them.

229
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We're all agreed it's the perfect
moment for the return

230
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of Yes, Prime Minister.

231
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But I wonder what former Prime
Minister Tony Blair makes of it...

232
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, it's a very important
question,

233
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I'm glad that you've asked it,
and what I think we've got

234
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to address is a very serious issue,
and it's absolutely right

235
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that you said it, and what we're
doing, and what we said,

236
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to address is a very serious issue,
and it's absolutely right

237
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that you said it, and what we're
doing, and what we said,

238
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and what we intend to say,
and what we intend to act upon,

239
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is that very thing.
So in answer to that question,

240
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is that very thing.
So in answer to that question,

241
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think we've got
to look at it very carefully.

242
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Thanks, Tony.

243
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Coming up, we'll reveal
which of these faces

244
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was a secret source for the writers.

245
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And relive the moment
Mrs Thatcher got in on the act.

246
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Capital, my dear Sir Humphrey,
capital.

247
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You'll know exactly where to start.

248
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Britain's best-loved
governmental sitcom is back.

249
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Award-winning writers Antony Jay
and Jonathan Lynn have brought back

250
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker, Sir Humphrey
and Bernard for a brand-new series.

251
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I really do admire your courage,
Prime Minister.

252
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, God!

253
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Have I been courageous?

254
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But back in the '70s, when
Antony first thought of the idea

255
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
for a governmental sitcom,
Jonathan was less than impressed,

256
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and Yes, Minister
nearly became No, Minister!

257
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was Tony's idea.

258
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought it was a terrible idea

259
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and declined his suggestion
that we do this together.

260
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And after three years, I was
looking for something new to write

261
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I couldn't think of anything,
so I phoned Tony who...

262
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I said, "Have you done anything
with that idea yet?"

263
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He said,
"No, are you interested now?"

264
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I said, "I don't know,
but it doesn't really have anything

265
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"that would normally make people
watch a television series.

266
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"It's three middle-aged
to elderly men,

267
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"sitting around
and talking about government."

268
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know? There are no women
or almost no women.

269
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There's no action.

270
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There's no sex.
There's no violence.

271
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That's why we took such trouble
to make it interesting

272
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and authentic and well researched,

273
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
so that even if they didn't
really get the jokes,

274
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
or laugh very much,
it might be interesting enough

275
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
for them to say, "Oh, I didn't know
that, that was quite interesting."

276
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know. "Maybe
we'd better watch next week."

277
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But we didn't expect it
to be a long-running series.

278
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No. We thought the BBC was
really quite brave to...

279
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to put on a comedy about government.

280
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The pilot of Yes, Minister
was made in 1979.

281
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But the BBC backed
out of launching it

282
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
until after the general election,
for fear of affecting the outcome.

283
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So as the country went to the polls

284
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to choose between
Callaghan and Thatcher,

285
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker was consigned
to his constituency until 1980.

286
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Hello and welcome.
Thank you, Sir Humphrey.

287
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I believe you know each other.

288
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, we did cross swords
when the Minister gave me

289
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
a grilling over the estimates
in the Public Accounts Committee.

290
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I wouldn't say that.

291
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, you came up with all the
questions I hoped nobody would ask.

292
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, opposition's about asking
awkward questions.

293
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And government is about not
answering them.

294
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, you answered all mine anyway.

295
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm glad you thought so, Minister.

296
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember, back in 1980,
when it was first on,

297
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was 12 at the time, and I remember
my dad just saying to me,

298
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Now then, now then, Jonathan, watch
this, you might learn something."

299
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was an outstanding example
of what a sitcom should be about.

300
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
This serious side to it,
the political side to it.

301
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it didn't dumb down ever.

302
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Minister had something
important to say

303
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
about the process of government.

304
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And being able to combine
something interesting

305
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and important with making me
roll in my chair with laughter,

306
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
seemed to me
to be a great combination.

307
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You see, Bernard, it is
our duty to assist the Minister to

308
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
fight for the department's money,
despite his own panicked reaction.

309
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Do you mean help
him overcome his panic?

310
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, let him panic.

311
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Politicians like to panic,
they need activity.

312
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's their substitute
for achievement.

313
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So accurate was Yes Minister's
portrayal of the inner-workings

314
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of Government that politically
astute fans of the show suspected

315
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the writers were getting their
storylines straight from the top.

316
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, I assumed that they
had inside sources.

317
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
If they hadn't, then
they were just pure genius.

318
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Politicians are extremely indiscreet

319
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the higher up they get,
the more indiscreet they are.

320
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It wasn't difficult to get people
to come and have lunch with us

321
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
if it was a reasonably decent
restaurant.

322
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And after the third glass of wine,

323
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
all sorts of interesting
information emerged.

324
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And one high ranking official
willing to be wined and dined

325
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was former
Prime Ministerial head of policy,

326
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bernard Donoghue, who was to
become their top informer.

327
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was quite happy to inform them,
because I felt, basically,

328
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the public had a right to know
what was going on.

329
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They would say to me, "We want to
know if that's how the Prime Minister

330
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"would receive ministers,
civil servants.

331
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"How they would speak to one another,

332
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"how policy issues were
processed through."

333
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What I was able to do was,

334
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
tell them tales, stories of episodes
from my experience in Number Ten,

335
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which I thought were either
revealing of the nature of the

336
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
power relationships there, and
especially of the bureaucratic power,

337
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
or which I thought were funny
or capable of being made funny.

338
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
One story Bernard
informed on involved an overseas

339
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
diplomatic mission,
which the writers quickly

340
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
transformed into a classic
episode of Yes, Minister.

341
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I told them about a time when
we went on a state visit

342
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to India and Pakistan.

343
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And at the state reception there was
no alcohol, just orange juice.

344
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And we thought it would be
very helpful

345
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
if we could get some
whisky in the orange juice.

346
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So we'd drink a third of the glass
and then pour the whisky in,

347
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which would look a little brown,
but not dangerously suspicious.

348
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But how do we get the whisky there?

349
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mentioned that and Jonathan said,
"I can use that."

350
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Ah, Bernard. Bernard. Yes?

351
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You're wanted in the communications
room. A Mr John Walker.

352
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What's interesting about that story,
which...is that we're talking

353
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to a cabinet minister who didn't
know about it, who saw the episode.

354
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He said, he knew at once that was
based on a real episode.

355
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Because he recognised that's exactly
what is likely to happen

356
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and does happen, whereas most of the
audience has probably thought,

357
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Oh, well, they've gone a bit far
this time." That's right.

358
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The interesting thing is, whenever we
were accused of going too far,

359
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
it was something that had happened.

360
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Any messages
in the communications room?

361
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, there is one for Sir
Humphrey, Minister. Oh, good, yes?

362
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, the Soviet Embassy is on the
line, Sir Humphrey, a Mr Smirnoff.

363
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Soviets!

364
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They promised me that it

365
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
would not be revealed that
I'd played any part.

366
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I just never told anyone myself.

367
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I knew they never told anyone.

368
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jonathan and Antony never told me
who else they talked to.

369
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I didn't tell anyone,
I didn't tell my own family.

370
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
These insider insights over lunch
provided such a rich source

371
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of comedy, that Yes, Minister
soon became must-see TV

372
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
amongst politicians
and civil servants alike.

373
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it wasn't long before those
at the very heart of government

374
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
were willing to reveal all.

375
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
One of many. I was
one of many inside sources, yes.

376
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You don't tell them state secrets,
but that's quite different.

377
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You tell them how government works
and how the civil service works.

378
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
If I thought of some little story,
some anecdote,

379
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which might be of use to him,
I would tell him.

380
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I can't remember it all now,
it was a long time ago.

381
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But for example, the, er,
ministerial Christmas list,

382
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Christmas card list.

383
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That was something which
I mentioned to him,

384
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and that duly
came into one of the episodes.

385
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bernard, this is important,

386
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I have to finish these
Cabinet defence papers.

387
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm afraid this is much more
urgent, Minister. What is it?

388
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Your Christmas cards, Minister.
They cannot be postponed any longer.

389
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh right. Oh! Which is which?

390
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well they're all clearly labelled,
Minister, these you sign Jim,

391
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
these you sign Jim Hacker,
these Jim and Annie,

392
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
these Annie and Jim Hacker,
these love from Annie and Jim.

393
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
As the series progressed,
we were approached by various people

394
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
in all branches of
government, eager to ell us things.

395
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They wanted to, they had something
they wanted to leak, because

396
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
it would be in their, to their
advantage in some way to do so.

397
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jonathan and Antony have never
named their sources.

398
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But I wonder what our esteemed
select committee make of these

399
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
revelations and, more importantly,

400
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
if there's a leaky
minister in their midst?

401
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Michael, I want to start with
you about leaks,

402
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because obviously the series was
written when you were in government.

403
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it is generally well
believed that the

404
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
sources for a lot of the stories
came from people in government.

405
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I wonder if you can help us
as honestly as you can...

406
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yeah, well, it's true.
As to how much went to...

407
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
When I was Environment Secretary
in the early '80s,

408
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the authors
of the programme wrote and said,

409
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"We're doing a programme
and we'd very much like to meet you

410
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and we're...a particular scene is
going to be about the battle

411
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"between the Secretary of State
and a local authority".

412
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I said, "Fine."

413
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I had lunch, we had a very good
lunch, and we laughed a lot,

414
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and they laughed a lot,

415
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I don't know, they probably
recorded it, and, fine.

416
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it made a fantastic programme.

417
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Local councillors, in practice,
are accountable to nobody.

418
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They're public-spirited citizens,

419
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
selflessly sacrificing
their spare time.

420
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Have you ever met any?

421
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Occasionally,
when there was no alternative.

422
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Half of them are self-centred
busybodies on an ego trip

423
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the other half are only in it
for what they can get out of it.

424
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Perhaps they ought
to be in the House of Commons?

425
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Did you ever leak documents that you
should not have leaked?

426
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No. Oh!

427
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, I was not in the
leaking business.

428
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I think, by and large,
there is too much leaking.

429
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
All the time, again, through your
government there were regular leaks.

430
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They were either leaks which were
unattributed or they were leaks

431
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that came early and were clearly
a minister jostling for position.

432
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think what happens is,
round Westminster,

433
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
politicians talking to each other,
talking to journalists,

434
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
civil servants talking to each other
talking to journalists -

435
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the chatter just gets out.

436
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think the problem is that
people talk too much.

437
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I don't see that
necessarily as leaking.

438
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And you do gossip, you lot,
don't you? Yeah.

439
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Nothing like as much
as press secretaries.

440
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I didn't, I was like that.

441
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
THEY ALL LAUGH

442
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was never a gossip.

443
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You never revealed details of what
went on in Government in,

444
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
say, a book?
I mean, that would be...

445
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What, my diaries?
We're not here to plug my diaries!

446
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
THEY LAUGH
Well, why not?

447
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's available at all good bookshops.

448
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Our Comedy Committee return
after a short recess,

449
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
when we discover what it's like
to be a real life Sir Humphrey.

450
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They translated my title into
Japanese and back.

451
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And they laughed
when I was introduced.

452
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I said, "What did they say?"

453
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he said, "They described
you as an eternal typist."

454
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
THEY ALL LAUGH

455
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Obviously,
that means I do the letters.

456
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And the nation's favourite
Principal Private Secretary,

457
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bernard, meets a real life Bernard.

458
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember once
when I went to Number Ten,

459
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
somebody came up to me
and said, "I'm Bernard".

460
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I said, "No, I'm Bernard".

461
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he said,
"No, that person's Bernard,

462
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and the other bloke over there's
Bernard." So you were Bernard?

463
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was Bernard, yeah.

464
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister, the show
that exposes the secretive

465
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
inner workings of Government,
has returned.

466
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey
are still at war, only this time,

467
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Scotland, Europe

468
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the fictional Kumranistan
are the sources of conflict.

469
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I could be wrong.

470
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Say that again.

471
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But to discover how these battling
politicos became household names,

472
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
we have to reacquaint ourselves with
the original actors, Paul Eddington,

473
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
who played the Right Honourable Jim
Hacker, and Nigel Hawthorne

474
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
who embodied the entire civil
service as Sir Humphrey Appleby.

475
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Both Hacker and Humphrey, on the
page, are not very likeable people.

476
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it's very important that they're
played by likeable actors.

477
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul was very likeable.

478
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'd been watching him
since I was a kid.

479
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I grew up in Bath
and I used to see Paul

480
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
at the Bristol Old Vic
quite often.

481
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And then the Good Life had made him
into almost a star.

482
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it was obviously the right
moment for him.

483
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Minister,
a minister can do what he likes.

484
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's the people's will.
I am their leader.

485
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I must follow them.

486
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul Eddington was just a lovely,
lovely comic actor.

487
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He's a really...smiley,
genial kind of man.

488
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And so he,
all of that goes into Jim Hacker.

489
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Equally, he comes
across as intelligent

490
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and as somebody with
a certain amount of bearing.

491
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I think you just get the sense
that he's a real person,

492
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that he's vulnerable,
that he's human,

493
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and that he sort of is
fundamentally quite nice as well.

494
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, of course, Minister,
it must be frightfully difficult

495
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to concentrate
if you keep being woken up.

496
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Steering Jim Hacker through
the choppy waters of Whitehall

497
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was the Permanent Secretary
for the DAA, Sir Humphrey Appleby.

498
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The great thing about Nigel
is that he was very good at playing

499
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
establishment figures
with interesting layers of other

500
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
thoughts going on underneath.

501
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
May I come in, Minister?
Sit down, Humphrey.

502
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And perhaps one of the most
anticipated parts of every episode

503
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was Sir Humphrey's big speech.

504
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, it was a conversation to the
effect that, in view of the somewhat

505
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
nebulous and inexplicit nature
of your remit,

506
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the arguably marginal and
peripheral nature of your influence

507
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
on the central deliberations
and decisions within
the political process,

508
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that there could be a case
for restructuring

509
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
their action priorities in such a
way as to eliminate your liquidation

510
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
from their immediate agenda.

511
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You really do believe that Sir
Humphrey exists, because surely no

512
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
actor could ever become a character
that duplicitous and verbose.

513
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So to create this extraordinary
character, this duplicitous,

514
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Machiavellian, dreadful man,
saying yes when he meant no,

515
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was an amazing achievement.

516
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They said that?

517
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That was the gist of it.

518
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He made a deal with us

519
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
very early on that we wouldn't
change any of those long speeches

520
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
within three weeks of starting
rehearsal for a particular episode.

521
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And when it came to
the end of a series,

522
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he still had every single speech by
heart, which I thought was awful,

523
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to have a perfectly decent mind
cluttered up with that junk.

524
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes. Yes, he didn't seem
to have a mental shredder. No.

525
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bamboozling hapless ministers is
top of Sir Humphrey's agenda.

526
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But how true to life is this
relationship between

527
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the civil service and ministers?

528
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Our Committee for Comedy Analysis
are on hand to shed light

529
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
on this very private partnership.

530
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Gus, did you ever feel
yourself...I mean, I'd say of

531
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the Cabinet Secretaries that
I knew, that you were sort of,

532
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
this is a compliment, the least
Sir Humphreyish, in many, many ways.

533
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There were some moments.

534
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I would, I would sometimes default to
my background of being an economist.

535
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, one of the Yes, Minister
episodes has this thing about,

536
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
as a specialist,
you can never make it to the top.

537
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I would find myself talking
about, you can imagine who with,

538
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
neo-classical endogenous
growth theory,

539
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and you'd think that Humphrey
would have loved this.

540
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was like, I remember that time
when he says,

541
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Your current conversational
interlocutor is the person

542
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"who usually refers to themselves by
use of the perpendicular pronoun."

543
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought,
"I could never have said that."

544
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's just so brilliant.

545
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Did you ever feel,
as a civil servant,

546
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
did you ever feel that you actually
had more power than a minister?

547
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No. Never? Never.

548
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You do spend a lot of your time
saying, "Are you sure, Minister?"

549
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know, you want to make
an announcement, particularly,

550
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'd say, at party conference, there's
been no work done on it, no one's

551
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
looked at is this feasible, could we
do it, how much is it going to cost?

552
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Announcements out of the blue,
it is our job, we do say,

553
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Stop, think." That's why I think we
get the reputation of being cautious.

554
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Minister is spot on because
when Hacker goes into his office

555
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the Permanent Secretary reels
out this long list of secretaries,

556
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"I'm the Permanent secretary. I have
a Principal Private Secretary, you

557
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"have a Principal Private Secretary,
they have Private Secretaries.

558
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"You will appoint a Parliamentary
Private Secretary."

559
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And Hacker says, and this happened
to me in way, Hacker says,

560
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Does anyone type letters?"

561
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember going to Japan

562
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
when I was Permanent Secretary
at the Treasury and they translated

563
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
my title into Japanese and back. And
they laughed when I was introduced.

564
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I said, "What did they say?"

565
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They said, "They described you
as an eternal typist."

566
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
THEY LAUGH

567
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Obviously,
that means I do the letters!

568
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Do you mean to seriously tell me
that if I transfer everything

569
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
from here to here without even
reading it, that's all I have to do?

570
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes. It'll be dealt with?

571
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Precisely. Properly?

572
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Immaculately.

573
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, what's a minister
here for then?

574
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Err...

575
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Ministers have no managerial
experience in the

576
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
vast majority of cases.

577
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And they run, they turn up to run
a giant bureaucracy,

578
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and they've never run
anything before.

579
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And there is no induction,
there is no training.

580
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Ministers going in never,
very rarely,

581
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
even talk to the ones going out.

582
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So it's not surprising that there
are these, I can't get on with,

583
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I don't know what to do,
they won't do what I tell them.

584
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They've never done
anything of a managerial nature.

585
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And holding Jim's department
together

586
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was his Principal Private
Secretary, Bernard Woolley,

587
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
whose job it was to remain the model
of professional impartiality.

588
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

589
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I don't think so, Minister.

590
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm not thinking anything, really.

591
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think I begin to smell a rat.

592
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, shall I get an
Environmental Health officer?

593
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bernard is, is an ear.

594
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He's somebody that the other
two can talk to.

595
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He has his own character
and his own issues,

596
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but structurally he's most
important because he's

597
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
a recipient of the point of view
of both of the two main characters.

598
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, confidentially, Minister,
everything you tell me

599
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is in complete confidence.

600
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So equally,
and I'm sure you appreciate this,

601
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and by appreciate I don't actually
mean appreciate, I mean understand

602
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that everything Sir Humphrey tells
me is also in complete confidence.

603
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
As indeed, everything I tell you is
in complete confidence.

604
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And for that matter,
everything I tell Sir Humphrey
is in complete confidence.

605
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
To discover just how difficult
the job of being a real-life

606
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Bernard is, Derek Fowlds has been
granted top security access

607
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to Whitehall's Cabinet Offices
to meet the man who was

608
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
a real-life Bernard, Robin Butler.

609
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember once
when I went to Number Ten,

610
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
somebody came up to me
and said, "I'm Bernard".

611
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I said, "No, I'm Bernard".

612
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he said,
"No, that person's Bernard,

613
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and the other bloke over
there's Bernard." Yes.

614
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So you were Bernard?

615
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I was Bernard, yeah, for three years
to Margaret Thatcher.

616
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So was it an
accurate portrayal of Bernard?

617
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was, yes. It was very accurate.

618
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I wouldn't say that
Paul Eddington, Jim Hacker,

619
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was an accurate portrayal of
Margaret Thatcher. No!

620
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But in my life,
Derek, I've played Sir Humphrey,

621
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I've played Bernard. Yes.

622
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Never had the chance
to play Jim Hacker.

623
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You know, when I was playing
Bernard, I always found it

624
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
very difficult
because I was in the middle.

625
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And sometimes
I agreed with the Minister,

626
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
then I'd agree with Sir Humphrey.

627
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I had to walk a fence.

628
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I want to know, is that familiar?

629
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Very, very familiar. You were always
absolutely charming, Derek.

630
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You were... Was I?

631
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yeah, charming, you sat there and
when you agreed with the Minister,

632
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Sir Humphrey would put
you right quite quickly afterwards.

633
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember he used to take
you into his study and sit you down,

634
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and tell you the error of your ways,
if you agreed with the...

635
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes. Like a naughty schoolboy.
..with the Minister.

636
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Who was doing that to you,
when you were...?

637
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, the Sir Humphrey when I was you

638
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was Robert Armstrong,
Sir Robert Armstrong.

639
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, I remember him, yes.
Yeah. But he was a close friend.

640
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He'd been Sir Humphrey,
he'd been Bernard before.

641
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And so he understood
what it was all about.

642
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So, I don't think
he ever had actually to reproach me.

643
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Now, I want to ask you a question.
I've always wanted to ask you this.

644
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Who really does run the country?

645
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Is it the Government,
or is it the civil service?

646
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The Government. I mean, you know,
ministers, ministers...

647
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You said that without a pause.

648
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, because I've always
believed it, actually.

649
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think it's very important,
you know, for the civil service

650
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to recognise that ministers
are the elected people.

651
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They must have the final decision.

652
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And then it was my job to carry it
out as efficiently as I could.

653
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So the buck stopped with them.
The buck stopped with them.

654
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They were the ones who had to
get re-elected.

655
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And you had to carry,
carry it through? Yes.

656
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Even though you were against it?
Yes.

657
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's been a great pleasure.
And, as I say, an honour.

658
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it's lovely to see you again.
And thank you, thank you so much.

659
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But for all Bernard and
Sir Humphrey's institutional

660
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
befuddlement, Hacker was about to be
propelled to the top job.

661
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So, coming up, our committee casts
judgment on our favourite

662
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
fictional
Prime Minister, Jim Hacker.

663
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, no, look this is a good joke.

664
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he is a very good joke
but he's not a Prime Minister.

665
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And we look at how the show's
number one fan

666
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
muscled her way in on the act.

667
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I look forward to receiving
your plan for abolition soon.

668
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Er, tomorrow, shall we say?

669
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The greatest satire about
British bureaucracy is back.

670
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The new series of
Yes, Prime Minister sees Jim Hacker

671
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
holed up at Chequers trying to
solve our financial woes.

672
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Jim Hacker Saves Europe!"

673
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes.

674
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Nothing else can go wrong
tonight, can it?

675
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Whilst our modern day Jim Hacker is
tackling issues on a global scale,

676
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
back in the '80s, Mrs Thatcher's
problems were generally

677
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
much closer to home, with riots,
strikes and mass unemployment.

678
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But none of this stopped her
tuning in to her favourite show.

679
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
When you have time to watch TV,
what's your favourite programme?

680
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I've just finished watching
Yes, Minister.

681
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Do you ever watch that?

682
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No.

683
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, it was a take-off of a
minister and his civil servant

684
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and it was marvellous.

685
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Some bits of it were totally true
and some not so true.

686
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm not sure that Mrs Thatcher found
anything terribly hilarious

687
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but she found it terribly amusing.

688
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In fact, Mrs Thatcher was
so taken with the show that

689
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
she engineered a rather bizarre
meeting with its stars.

690
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
One of the BBC's most popular
comedy series won an award

691
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
today from the National Viewers
and Listeners Association.

692
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The series is Yes, Minister,
about the conflicts

693
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
between politicians
and their civil servants.

694
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The award was presented
by the programme's biggest fan.

695
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We were asked if we would
accept an award from

696
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the National Viewers
and Listeners Association.

697
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We were then told that Mrs Thatcher
was going to present the award,

698
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
which disturbed me, because that made
it in some sense political.

699
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Then, about two days before it
happened, we got the message

700
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
saying that she had written a
sketch, a really improbable notion!

701
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And my first thought was, "What the
hell is she doing writing sketches

702
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"when she ought to be
running the country

703
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"somewhat better than
she's running it at the moment?"

704
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Thankfully, Mrs Thatcher did have
better things to do

705
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
than try her hand
at comedy script writing.

706
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That job was left to her trusted
Chief of Press, Bernard Ingham.

707
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I wrote it.

708
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Robin Butler, the Principal Private
Secretary, titivated it.

709
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We rehearsed this.

710
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I remember counting 23 rehearsals
in which she played herself.

711
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Robin Butler, her Principal Private
Secretary, played Jim Hacker.

712
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I, with monumental miscasting,
played Sir Humphrey.

713
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What were they all doing?
What about the country?

714
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, that is
the most grotesque scene.

715
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That's truly horrifying!

716
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, it shows they're
serious about rehearsal.

717
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
HE LAUGHS

718
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
With Thatcher ready to perform
the sketch, all she needed was

719
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne
to agree to take part.

720
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul and Nigel phoned me
in a great state,

721
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
they were both well to
the left of centre.

722
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And said, "How terrible, we don't
want to act with Mrs Thatcher,

723
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and anyway,
she obviously can't act."

724
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So I said, "Well, it's up to you,
if you don't want to do it,

725
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"you can say no."

726
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I don't think anybody said
to her directly,

727
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"We don't want to take part."

728
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I don't think that Mrs Thatcher
was ever the sort of

729
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
cuddly kind of person that you
rang with bad news.

730
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So, in the face of great power,
Paul and Nigel crumbled

731
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and took to the stage.

732
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I want you to abolish economists.

733
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
CROWD LAUGH

734
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Abolish economists, Prime Minister?

735
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, abolish economists,
and quickly.

736
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
All of them, Prime Minister?

737
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, all of them.

738
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I look forward to receiving
your plan for abolition soon.

739
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Er, tomorrow, shall we say?

740
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
CROWD LAUGH

741
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'd like you to announce it
before it all leaks.

742
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, yes, tomorrow.

743
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It was as frightful as I had feared.

744
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And what was really embarrassing was
that thereafter everyone said,

745
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Oh, didn't Mrs Thatcher appear
in your show?"

746
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And that was just, you know,
the unkindest cut of all, I thought.

747
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Capital, my dear Sir Humphrey.
Capital.

748
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You'll know exactly where to start.

749
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister.

750
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Politicians are generally less
well regarded now.

751
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Obviously, in the '80s, what everyone
thought about the policies,

752
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Mrs T was a strong Prime Minister,
loved by some, loathed by others.

753
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But there was a respectful view
of her power and strength.

754
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I also think actually Yes, Prime
Minister, although it was satire

755
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and sent them all up, there was
a kind of affection in there.

756
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yeah. Yeah. ..For people who
went into public service,

757
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
be they politicians or
civil servants.

758
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I actually hate all this
kind of anti politics stuff

759
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and I don't think politicians do
nearly enough to push back on it.

760
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I completely agree with that.

761
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, the issue for me
is participation in politics,

762
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and in turn-outs at elections,
people getting involved in things.

763
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think we're starting to see that
people really do have a civic spirit,

764
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
just look at volunteering
in the Olympics, you know.

765
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So I think anything
which actually elevates people

766
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
talking about politics,
thinking about it,

767
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and actually with a bit of humour,
and saying,

768
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Actually these guys are trying to do
tough things in a tough world."

769
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And they're real people. And they're
real people and, you know,

770
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
they play their games but actually
they're trying to do the right thing.

771
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey were now
the darlings of the establishment,

772
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but after penning three series
on the minutiae of ministerial life,

773
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the writers decided to bring
Yes, Minister to an end.

774
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We'd done 21 episodes.
And that's fine.

775
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We'll be repeating ourselves,
you know, we've taken nearly all the

776
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
situations that are likely to crop
up in a minister's life, and, um...

777
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We felt that was enough. Yeah.

778
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But in Hacker, the writers had
created a national icon

779
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the public pleaded for more.

780
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It would take two years of begging
by the BBC's Director of Television,

781
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
before Jonathan
and Tony brought Jim back.

782
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
When Bill Cotton phoned us
we said,

783
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Well, we don't want to do any
more Yes, Minister,

784
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"but we could promote
Jim to Number Ten."

785
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And, because as
Minister of Administrative Affairs,

786
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he couldn't have anything to do
with foreign policy.

787
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Espionage, the atom bomb.
Defence. Or H-bomb.

788
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There was a whole range of subjects
that he just wouldn't

789
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
have been allowed to have
anything to do with.

790
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The appointment of bishops.

791
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So the only answer was to make him
Prime Minister

792
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
so he could tackle all the other
policy areas that interested us.

793
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Finally, on the 9th of January
1986, Jim Hacker was propelled

794
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to the top job and Yes, Minister
became Yes, Prime Minister.

795
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I-i-i-is, is...

796
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Is it me?

797
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister.

798
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The biggest shock, for me,
was turning Yes, Minister into

799
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister.

800
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Because I thought it's all very well
to have a crazy minister who

801
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
can barely cross a road and still
be in charge of a department,

802
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but a Prime Minister?

803
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Isn't that going a bit far?

804
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But in fact, they triumphantly
succeeded in making sure that

805
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker became Prime Minister
and I think it got funnier.

806
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You always suspected, you always
hoped through the Yes, Minister

807
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
series that maybe one day, one day
he might become Prime Minister.

808
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it always felt that was the next
logical chapter of the programme.

809
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So to see him there with the top
job, very satisfying indeed.

810
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
This is awful, we're another three
points down in the opinion polls.

811
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Not the Government,
only your personal rating.

812
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
People watching at home will
think, you know,

813
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is the Prime Minister
really like this?

814
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Is any Prime Minister such
a hopeless case?

815
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And the answer's no.

816
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But did I see Tony Blair or Gordon
Brown ever in a Jim Hacker moment?

817
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, the answer is yes.

818
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But that was a tiny part of their
sort of command, control,

819
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
sense of purpose and
Prime Ministerial quality.

820
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Forget policy and political
strategies, top of Jim's agenda were

821
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
appearance, popularity, ratings,
and, most importantly, re-election.

822
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So let's see what our panel
of government experts think.

823
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, Hacker was right to be obsessed
with every passing headline

824
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because Hacker didn't have the
necessary skill set to do the job,

825
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and if you haven't got
the necessary skill set,

826
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
you're going to be obsessed
with your image.

827
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He didn't have a real sense of what
he wanted to do with power.

828
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And so, therefore, I think, what,

829
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
all you could do was advise him
actually to find that kind of

830
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
basic, core political and economic
strategy, he never had that.

831
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It wasn't there, Alistair.
And it wasn't there.

832
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That was part of the joke.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.

833
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
This guy floundering out there,
you know?

834
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I think the nearest Prime Minister
that he has resembled is Tony Blair.

835
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Do you? Oh, no. I can't see it.

836
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In characteristics, like...

837
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, I couldn't,
I couldn't ever see that.

838
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He doesn't resemble the others.
He's not a John Major or...

839
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought you were going to
say Ted Heath.

840
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I couldn't ever see Jim Hacker
become Prime Minister.

841
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No. I agree with that.
He's simply not real.

842
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He can't make up his mind,
he's blowing in very direction,

843
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he's short term gimmickry,
he grabs any headline.

844
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, no he's complete...
Cameron is the nearest.

845
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Do you think Cameron is the nearest?
No, of course not.

846
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Cameron's the nearest to what
Michael's just said.

847
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Absolute rubbish. No, no.
No, no, look, this is a good joke.

848
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he is a very good joke
but he's not a Prime Minister.

849
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Nobody is exactly that,
a Hacker-like figure but...

850
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But some of his, I mean
he's like a kind of politician with

851
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the bonnet up,
you see the, you know, he's,

852
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he does things out loud that other
ministers would just think.

853
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And part of its success is that
he says these things.

854
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, you know,
if a Permanent Secretary came

855
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and explained some policy that
you didn't understand,

856
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
you'd think, "Well, I'll wait
till he's gone,

857
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and then I'll talk to my
special advisor."

858
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Hacker says, "I don't know what
you're talking about."

859
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's like somehow he's become
Prime Minister by accident.

860
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He's become Prime Minister cos
he makes a good programme,

861
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that's why he's there, you know?

862
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yeah, but he's also quite
a sympathetic character, isn't he?

863
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes! Yes. He's nice. Yeah.

864
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And would feel he looks more human,
whereas Sir Humphrey is kind of

865
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
something off a conveyer belt that's
polished and sophisticated,

866
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but not the kind
of person you'd meet down the pub.

867
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
To lose one cabinet minister may be
regarded as a misfortune,

868
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to lose both looks like
carelessness.

869
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
By 1988 Yes, Prime Minister

870
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and its predecessor Yes, Minister
were firm favourites with viewers.

871
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In all, they bagged seven BAFTAs,
with Nigel Hawthorne winning

872
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
best comedy performer four
times in a row.

873
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Forgive me, Minister.

874
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But after just two series,
Hacker, Sir Humphrey and Bernard

875
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
bowed out on the
28th of January 1988.

876
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We felt we'd done what
there was to do, really,

877
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
in that we'd be just sort of
repeating ourselves if we went on.

878
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That was one of the reasons,
the other reason was that Paul

879
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
was becoming quite fragile,
it was clear that his, there was,

880
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
he had some serious illness,
it wasn't known what it was.

881
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And he felt quite unwell.

882
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And most of the Yes, Prime Minister
series, Paul is sitting in a chair.

883
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And it's not just because that's
the way it was blocked,

884
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
it was because of what he needed to
do for most of the time.

885
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We weren't sure that by the time
we'd written another series,

886
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because we took our time writing
them, um, at what stage of health

887
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul would be in,
or whether he would want to go on.

888
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Paul Eddington lost his battle with
cancer in 1995 at the age of 68.

889
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
His death was followed six years
later by the passing

890
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of his 72-year-old co-star,
Nigel Hawthorne.

891
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Even though the last episode
aired in 1989,

892
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes, Prime Minister lives on and is
now shown in 84 countries worldwide.

893
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
In 2010 it became a hit stage show.

894
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And now it's back on TV.

895
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm absolutely beside myself with
excitement for a new

896
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
series of Yes, Prime Minister.

897
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm sort of slightly over
excited, actually.

898
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm getting the popcorn
in the microwave as we speak.

899
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The appetite is there,
and the series will be, therefore,

900
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
one can predict, a great success.

901
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Now pour a large sherry and make
yourself comfortable

902
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
as we go behind
the scenes on the new series

903
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to meet its devilishly handsome
guest stars.

904
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
PARPS AND GURGLES

905
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And we discover why 2013
is right for Hacker's return.

906
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What I'll be really interested to
see is whether, whether he tweets.

907
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And whether, and whether
the Permanent Secretary tweets.

908
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Prime Minister...

909
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, cheer up, Bernard, have a
drinkie! Oh, don't look so worried!

910
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
After a quarter of century
in TV retirement,

911
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Britain's best loved
Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, is back.

912
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The brand new series requires
a brand new set.

913
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's taken six weeks of planning,
ten hours of construction,

914
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
34 highly skilled technicians,

915
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
approximately 13 gallons of tea,
and untold tins of biscuits.

916
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The result is a studio version

917
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
of the Prime Minister's
country residence, Chequers.

918
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, now.

919
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I haven't prepared anything
to say in welcome,

920
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but I very much want to welcome
our very welcome guest.

921
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Welcome!

922
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Holed up in Chequers
for the weekend,

923
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jim Hacker faces
the challenge of a lifetime.

924
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
A shaky oil pipeline deal
could save Europe

925
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and solve the British
financial crisis.

926
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But it comes with
some unfortunate conditions.

927
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
For me, what's great is that
whoever's in office,

928
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
they are all dealing with
these problems. Yeah.

929
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And in this absolutely on the money
series, we're dealing with,

930
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
on the money, Euro crisis. Yeah.

931
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's a central spine of these six
episodes, is the Euro crisis.

932
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
They are offered a massive loan.

933
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes. To get Europe
out of the Eurozone crisis.

934
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Quite frankly,

935
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I am now profoundly suspicious
about this whole Kumranistan loan.

936
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, I don't know what
else I don't know. Do you know?

937
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There are one or two things
attached to the loan

938
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
we don't want to give away.

939
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But it's a loan with conditions,

940
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and the conditions cause major
ructions and problems, which

941
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Sir Humphrey and Bernard and Claire,
the new special advisor,

942
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
we try to help him,
but in our helping way,

943
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
cause him great hindrance.

944
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Yes.
HE LAUGHS

945
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, I find that working
with David, who's Jim,

946
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and Henry, who is Sir Humphrey,

947
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is, I mean, it's very funny because
I've been told that

948
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
they have quite a long history
working together,

949
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and so they're almost like
a unit, and so it's quite funny

950
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
coming in, and seeing them
rather like a kind of double act.

951
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And as Bernard, I'm trying to
sort of feather my way in,

952
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
to try and work out where you fit.

953
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He seems to think he's in charge
and we're just paid officials.

954
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Functionaries.

955
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Good God!

956
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's not his business to interfere
in the way Government is run.

957
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The cast get their scripts
eight weeks in advance

958
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
in order to learn
the dialogue heavy episodes.

959
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Jonathan, who co-wrote it with Tony,
is also directing. He's quite hard.

960
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
He can be quite hard on,
well not just me, but everyone.

961
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But the results,
I think, are pretty good.

962
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So it's hard work,
but, you know, it's, it's worth it,

963
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
you know, for the end results.

964
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The actor playing Jim's new
coalition partner

965
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
rounds off the stellar cast,
and I think we all know who he is!

966
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Hi, I'm George Clooney.

967
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And I'm playing Rory McAllister in
an episode of Yes, Prime Minister.

968
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
All the important decisions that
affect us are taken in London.

969
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Have you any idea
what that feels like?

970
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Of course I have.

971
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
All the important decisions that
affect us are taken in Brussels!

972
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm just terribly flattered
to be asked,

973
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because the standard's
incredible high. Beautifully done.

974
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Beautifully acted,
beautifully written.

975
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm very, very glad to be doing it.

976
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's slightly,
slightly scary, if I'm honest.

977
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I find myself waking up in
the night thinking,

978
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"Oh, God, am I going to get all
these lines done by Sunday?"

979
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But then that's,

980
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that's just what actors have to do
to get it right, you know.

981
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
If you're not scared,
you're not going to get it right.

982
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Will Scotland join the EU?

983
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We're already in the EU, Jim.

984
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
No, we are.

985
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You won't be when you leave the UK,
you'll have to apply for membership.

986
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Which would mean, of course,
joining the euro.

987
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But you won't mind that, will you?

988
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Ooh! The euro.

989
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Mmm! That would be a good thing
to join now, wouldn't it?

990
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
HE PARPS AND GURGLES

991
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
HE LAUGHS

992
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Can we have the groat back, please?

993
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Where is the satire around
this Government going to settle?

994
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Is it Cameron/Clegg?
Is it, um, is, is it Osborne?

995
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I can't... is it Bullingdon Club?
I can't quite...

996
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Oh, no. It's going to be who gets
credit for the good bits

997
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and who gets
the blame for the bad bits.

998
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But when it comes to it,
as you get closer to the election,

999
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the jockeying that will go on,

1000
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and there'll be lots of fun as
to how, how one side or the other,

1001
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
one minister or the other,
can pretend that this was all them,

1002
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and it wouldn't have happened
if it had been left to the others.

1003
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That will be, that will be
the interesting satire.

1004
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Who delivered? Whose idea was it?

1005
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
As you, as you take it forward,
the one thing about coalition you

1006
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
never have,
we've got two unusual things.

1007
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We've got a fixed term parliament,
so 7th of May, 2015,

1008
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the next election day.

1009
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
So how have you got, you know,

1010
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I can imagine as Cabinet Secretary,
Sir Humphrey saying,

1011
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
trying to keep the show on the road,
keep everybody together.

1012
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But actually, the two parties wanting
to differentiate their product,

1013
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and say, "Well, actually,
we did all the good bits,

1014
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
"and that was cos of that lot."

1015
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Michael, your old department, how
do you think you would have managed

1016
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
a coalition department?

1017
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
A bit like I managed
the other departments,

1018
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
because all governments
are coalitions.

1019
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, if you are a Prime Minister,
you preside over a party

1020
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but every party's a coalition,
and every government has to be

1021
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
balanced to reflect geography,
sex, region, you know,

1022
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the principalities,
whatever it may be, and...

1023
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Sex particularly, really.

1024
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
THEY GIGGLE

1025
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Well, this, you know, I think
we can agree with us, unanimous,

1026
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
across the party spectrum, that sex
is here to stay, under all parties.

1027
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I mean, let's not get controversial
about that, for God's sake.

1028
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And we've got Fifty Shades of Grey
around the table, looking at you.

1029
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Very good, Gus. Well that's
getting a bit, bit, err...

1030
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
What I'll be really interested to
see is whether, whether he tweets.

1031
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And whether, and whether
the Permanent Secretary tweets!

1032
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I can absolutely guarantee the
Permanent Secretary will not tweet.

1033
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Some civil servants tweet.
They do. They do.

1034
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Perhaps the first episode will be

1035
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
about him coming to terms
with social media.

1036
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
There are people working for
government whose responsibility

1037
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
is advising on tweeting and all
those things.

1038
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
We may today have designed
the first programme.

1039
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Perhaps one of the most memorable
elements of Yes, Prime Minister is

1040
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the hand-drawn title sequence. For
this brand new series, world-famous

1041
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
satirical artist Gerald Scarfe has
returned to wave his magic pencil

1042
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
over the faces of the new cast.

1043
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It has to look something like
the old titles so people
can recognise it

1044
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but obviously it has to
have a fresh, new approach.

1045
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
At the moment, I'm feeling my way.
I'm here today sketching
the characters

1046
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
so I get some kind of
feeling of them.

1047
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
A caricature comes from the
character of the person themselves

1048
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
and it's not just a face
with a big nose.

1049
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
David here, I haven't quite got.
He's got these black, smiling eyes.

1050
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
But being an actor, he's moving all
the time. He's changing all the time.

1051
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
That's the value of coming here and
seeing them because if you look at

1052
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
a photograph, it's not moving, if you
look at them, their face is

1053
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
malleable the whole time.

1054
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'm not the sort of artist who maps
it all out in pencil first then

1055
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
slavishly goes over the lines.

1056
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I work very impulsively and
therefore never quite know what

1057
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
it's going to look like eventually.

1058
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
After 18 months of preparation and
weeks of meticulous rehearsal,

1059
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
the team records the new series of
Yes, Prime Minister in front of 320

1060
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
eagerly-awaiting audience members.

1061
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Sorry, I'm late. It's been a
terrible day. Any particular reason?

1062
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
You've read about the Cabinet split?
Yes. And you've seen what's

1063
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
happened to the FTSE? Yes. And
the pound? Yes. And the inflation

1064
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
forecast? Yes. And the rising
unemployment figures? Yes. So how

1065
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
many particular reasons do you want?

1066
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I'll be tuning in. I'll be watching
it again and again.
I'll be taking notes.

1067
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
And wishing... It was only when
I was doing my political science

1068
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
degree at university, that if I'd
seen all this before I'd written

1069
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
my papers, I'd have been much better
informed.

1070
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I might have got a better degree.

1071
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Did that mean yes or no?

1072
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I will certainly be tuning in
to the new series.

1073
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I hope to get a job on it.
HE LAUGHS

1074
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Don't you think that "yes" and "no"
are rather unspecific in their
application?

1075
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought it went very well. I
thought they were very good audience.

1076
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought the actors
were wonderful,

1077
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
but then I expect
nothing less of this great cast.

1078
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
The first night went brilliantly.
It's fantastic to have an audience

1079
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
out there.

1080
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Which brings it to life, so relieved
that it's over and pleased

1081
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
that they enjoyed it.

1082
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I thought it went very well. It's a
great feeling. We both struggle away

1083
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
with our characters for weeks of
rehearsal and then we get to this

1084
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
moment where the audience lift the
lid off. Don't you feel that, Henry?

1085
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
It's nice to be buoyed up.
I feel buoyed up by the audience's

1086
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
affection for these characters.
Absolutely.

1087
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Absolutely.

1088
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Coming back and doing this show
was fun.

1089
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
I hope it goes on being as much fun
as it was today.

1090
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd