He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
There was only one major aim for the third series of Yes Minister. It had to be the best one yet.
There had been no doubt that the show would return for another run. Everyone involved with Yes Minister felt that the series still had plenty of creative potential, and it was clear that the demand was there. Apart from the burgeoning viewing figures, there was also some evidence that fans wanted to find other ways to feel that they ‘owned’ the sitcom. Although this was an era long before DVD box sets, let alone endless repeats and cable and internet streaming services – even home video was still very much in its infancy – the BBC was already looking to exploit the popularity of the show, and its commercial wing was thus encouraging the writers to consider potential spin-offs.
Shortly after completing the second set of scripts, therefore, Jonathan Lynn had been persuaded to start work on adapting all of the episodes for the printed page. ‘We were approached by BBC Publications to allow some rip-off novelisations of the sort that are generally done, and we were not interested,’ Lynn later explained. After further discussions (and an exasperating amount of procrastination by the BBC1), it was decided instead to write something ‘in-house’ that would really do justice to the sitcom: ‘I realised that the only way to do a book of the series was to do it in the style of the Crossman Diaries, as Hacker’s memoirs, recorded each day on his tape recorder, usually a little drunk, blissfully unaware of what Sir Humphrey was doing behind his back.’2
Entitled Yes Minister: The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister by the Rt Hon. James Hacker MP, the text was published by BBC Books in 1981, and would be followed by two more volumes in 1982 and 1983. ‘It was a very difficult format to write,’ Lynn would reflect, ‘because many scenes in Yes Minister […] do not have Hacker present. So it became necessary to introduce Sir Humphrey’s papers, interviews with Bernard Woolley and extracts from other people’s memoirs. I felt that the books should have real quality in their own right. Antony was too busy with his company, Video Arts, and I was occupied directing plays; but I was able to find time, intermittently, to do these books. Each volume had a Foreword by the “editors” (us), there were lots of editorial comments and footnotes, and other ways of getting in jokes.’3
One eminent recipient of a copy of the first volume was Sir Robert Armstrong, who was Cabinet Secretary at the time. He was both pleased and relieved to find inside what he took to be confirmation that the occasional rumours within Whitehall, that he had been the model for Sir Humphrey, were actually wide of the mark. ‘Antony Jay gave me a copy of the book of the first series of the programme and he’d written in the front of it: “To Sir Arnold Robins Sir Robert Armstrong”. So I knew I was not Sir Humphrey Appleby!’4
Apart from the tie-in books (and a forthcoming series of vinyl and audio cassette releases5), there was also growing interest in the show itself from various overseas markets. Sales had already been made in numerous parts of Europe, Australasia and elsewhere (totalling thirty-one countries so far6), but now there were plans to start screening Yes Minister in America on its latest pay cable service, The Entertainment Channel, and the format rights to the sitcom had also just been sold to a US television producer. Its remarkable ability to make politics seem entertaining was now being noticed on a global scale.
Most importantly of all, as far as the next series was concerned, the show’s two writers knew that there was still so much more for them to explore. Every news bulletin, every current affairs programme, every report on proceedings in Parliament, provided them with more ideas for episodes. Another selection of potential plotlines landed on the mat each morning with the delivery of the daily papers.
They also continued to get inspiration from their regular Whitehall and Westminster sources, as well as from new contacts who had been prompted to get in touch out of admiration, or irritation, following previous instalments of the programme. This show was no tired old domestic sitcom, but was still an exceptionally rich and fascinating affair.
The actors saw it almost as clearly as the writers. Each of them, by this stage, felt that they understood their respective characters inside out, and was relishing the chance to take them into a new set of situations.
Paul Eddington, for example, had clearly mastered Hacker’s twitchy mix of vulnerability and hardness, often allowing the character to hide behind a carapace of authority but still showing, through those wide, spaniel-like eyes and that gaping mouth, the mounting panic that lurked inside. Eddington did not just show an idea entering into Hacker’s head; he also showed it bouncing about inside his skull. ‘He was,’ Derek Fowlds would say, ‘the absolute master of the triple take.’7 Few performers could oscillate so swiftly yet believably between composure and distress, and, in doing so, instantly remind one of countless other, real-life politicians of the time. He did not so much hold up a mirror to MPs as a magnifying glass.
Nigel Hawthorne was, if anything, even more mesmerising as Sir Humphrey. He was one of those actors who was as fascinating to watch for how he was doing something as he was for what he was doing. Lesser actors, blessed with such long, elaborate and elegant monologues, would simply have let the lines roll out, like motionless word dispensers, but Hawthorne always thought, and felt, as he spoke, and made the sound of the words give a sense of the workings of the brain from whence they came.
Though Derek Fowlds, as Bernard Woolley, was given far less to say or do, he had equally found a fine way to convey what was distinctive about his character, projecting a charmingly gauche and realistic personality during the brief scenes and exchanges in which he featured. While the other two main characters talked to, and at, each other, Fowlds, subtly, cleverly and effectively, showed Woolley listening, thinking and reacting to the content of their conversations, like an umpire at a Wimbledon final. He later recalled: ‘Syd Lotterby had always said to me about my role: “Pivotal, Derek, pivotal!” I liked that. I said, “What does that mean – they can’t do it without me?”’8
There was similar enthusiasm, and expertise, shown by the team on the other side of the cameras as the third series was planned. More sets were made, with even greater attention to detail, and Peter Whitmore, who was returning to oversee the production in Sydney Lotterby’s continuing absence, developed a few subtle changes to the filming of the new episodes, including more – and more pertinent – close-ups for Bernard Woolley, more varied lighting to match the mood of certain scenes and a little more dynamism inside Hacker’s office.
Jonathan Lynn, in spite of his own expertise as a theatre director, was not yet tempted to try his hand at shaping the sitcom in the studio, but he and Jay certainly made sure that their opinions were always heard: ‘I never wanted to direct [the show] myself, as I had never directed multi-camera shows in front of a live audience, and both Sydney and Peter were expert at it. But Tony and I attended many rehearsals and were unhesitating about giving our notes, comments and suggestions to the cast. We fulfilled the role that is played today by writer/executive producers in American TV.’9
‘They used to come in at the end of the week,’ Derek Fowlds would recall of the two writers, ‘and Paul, Nigel and me – because dear Johnny is quite short and Tony is very tall – we’d mutter to each other: “Watch out – here comes Little and Large!” They’d watch us rehearse this stuff that had been amusing us all week, and Paul, under his breath, used to say, “Have they laughed yet? Have they laughed yet?” And then Nigel would whisper, “I think they’ve smiled.” Happy days, they were.’10
Jay and Lynn were, as usual, in complete control of their words, although, on a few isolated occasions, they did accept suggestions from the actors. Paul Eddington, for example, was strong-willed enough, as he looked through the new scripts, to stand up to the writers when one passage that seemed to ‘make a bit of a mock’ of the idea of nuclear-free zones (in the episode called ‘The Challenge’) offended his pacifist sensibilities (‘I said to them, “Look, this is going a bit far, isn’t it? I don’t mind saying this, but it doesn’t sound quite as impartial as you usually are.” And they did tone it down a tiny little bit’11). There were also times when the writers, knowing how much meaning the actors could convey with merely an expression, gave them the licence to omit the odd line if they thought just a nuanced look would suffice. The sense of mutual respect, and admiration, had never been so strong.
Even the BBC’s publicity specialists – never, in truth, the most active and imaginative operators up until that point in time – approached the third series with a greater sense of vigour and thoroughness. They knew, regardless of how high the quality of the next set of shows might be, that the competition for viewers would be more intense than ever.
This was the beginning of a new age of televisual hype. A fourth channel, the imaginatively named Channel Four, would be launched on 2 November 1982, in part as a consequence of recommendations from the Annan Committee of which Antony Jay had been a member. The third series of Yes Minister was scheduled to start at 9 p.m. on BBC2, nine days later, on Thursday 11 November, just when many viewers might be most distracted by the novelty of a brand new channel. Thus it would need a bigger push than in the past.
It was clear soon enough in the production process, however, that the publicists would have plenty of positive things to say. This was an award-winning sitcom that was not going to rest on its laurels.
The third series would run more risks. There would be a restlessness about the show, an edgy drive to thrive, with the team spinning more plates in the air. The overall effect, as a consequence, would be more impressive than ever, even though the odd little item might crash and smash.
Themes would blend in with each other and build up from week to week. The battle lines between Whitehall and Westminster would be drawn more obliquely as internal factions on both sides formed and faded in response to each issue and debate. Personalities would be probed a little deeper, and some relationships placed under greater stress. Boosted by a slightly bigger budget, there would also be a broader view inside the DAA, with Sir Humphrey being seen chairing various committee meetings, Hacker exploring different offices and areas and one or two other civil servants playing a more prominent role in certain plots.
Once the series started – screened opposite the news on BBC1, the Dallas-style drama Falcon Crest on ITV and Nadine Gordimer’s post-apartheid parable Six Feet of the Country on Channel Four – it soon resumed its old appeal for viewers and critics alike, and attracted even more enthusiastic reactions than ever. Peaking at 4.45 million viewers during its run, and averaging about 3.70 million per episode, it was still well behind the most crowd-pleasing output on ITV (Coronation Street, which was pulling in around 15 million) and the most popular sitcom currently on BBC1 (Hi-de-Hi!, which was watched by about 11 million viewers per week), but it was consistently close to the top of BBC2’s highest-rated shows (the channel’s average weekly peak was 7 million) and regularly eclipsed all of Channel Four’s latest offerings.12
Sometimes the series, straining a little too hard to cover challenging new ground, would misfire and fall slightly below its usual high standards. The final episode, for example, entitled ‘The Middle-Class Rip-Off’, tried to explore the issue of government subsidies for the arts, but ended up seeming more like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party.
Lazily parroting Thatcherism’s patronising depiction of working-class people as a bunch of crude Benthamite sybarites who were far too happy playing pushpin in the pubs to ever bother with poetry, it seemed to imply that the state could and should stand aside and allow the market to maintain the existing cultural elites. The old T.H. Green-style liberal desire to help the systematically underprivileged to broaden and better themselves culturally was lampooned via the cartoonishly snobbish Sir Humphrey – ‘Subsidy is for art, for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don’t want but ought to have!’ – while Hacker, like Thatcher, sneered at anyone who dared to doubt the dogma of speciously populist cultural relativism (‘Let us choose what we subsidise by the extent of popular demand!’).
As a clumsy piece of public choice theory propaganda (screened on the public service BBC, to boot), the episode represented a rare error of judgement for a programme that usually operated above, rather than on one or other side of, any particular ideological debate. It misfired not because it ultimately favoured one position over another, but rather because, on this one occasion, it seemed so disinclined even to challenge such a position, and, pandering to certain popular prejudices, thus sounded more like a hectoring monologue than the usual calm, confident and inclusive dialogue.
Most of what preceded it in the series, however, displayed, in stark contrast, the kind of subtlety and Socratic rigour that had made the show so absorbing, thought-provoking and admirable – regardless of where any viewer happened to be located on the political spectrum. The flaws in logic, along with those in character, would thus be distributed widely and impressively fairly.
There were, for example, many more sparklingly apposite satirical lines about bureaucratic inertia (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘Minister, it takes time to do things now!’13); and institutionalised irrationality (HACKER: ‘The three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly; it’s more expensive to do them cheaply; and it’s more democratic to do them in secret’14); and administrative aimlessness (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘There are no ends in administration, Minister, except loose ends. Administration is eternal’. WOOLLEY: ‘For ever and ever …’ WOOLLEY/SIR HUMPHREY: ‘… amen’15). There were also plenty of equally effective digs at political spin and elision (INTERVIEWER: ‘Figures that I have here say that your Department’s staff has risen by ten per cent.’ HACKER: ‘Certainly not.’ INTERVIEWER: ‘Well, what figure do you have?’ HACKER: ‘I believe the figure is much more like 9.97’16) and government pragmatism (HACKER: ‘Are you saying that winking at corruption is government policy?’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘No, no, Minister. It could never be government policy. That is unthinkable. Only government practice’17).
There was also a classic explanation by Sir Humphrey of why civil servants needed to remain aloof and scrupulously neutral when advising their Ministers on political policies:
I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I’d believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel, and of denationalising it, and renationalising it. Of capital punishment, I’d have been a fervent retentionist, and an ardent abolitionist. I would have been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite. A grammar school preserver and destroyer. A nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac. But above all, I would have been a stark staring raving schizophrenic.18
There were also more telling observations about the distinctive personalities of those who comprised the show’s key comic triangle. The chronically ambivalent Woolley, for example, was weighed up carefully by Sir Humphrey, who still could not quite decide whether he was really a ‘high-flyer’, or just ‘a low-flyer supported by occasional gusts of wind’.19 Sir Humphrey himself was put down, from a safe distance, by Hacker (HACKER: ‘Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Humphrey is not God, okay?’ WOOLLEY: ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’). Hacker, in turn, received the usual caustic barbs from Sir Humphrey (‘But I didn’t expect you to do anything. I mean, you’ve never done anything before’).
There were also several more well-researched and amusingly insightful glimpses into the kinds of ways in which Whitehall strives to spirit away compromising information, such as when Sir Humphrey shows Hacker how to ‘tidy up’ an historic file:
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Well [opening a file] this is what we normally do [hands Hacker a document] in circumstances like these … |
HACKER: |
‘This file contains the complete set of papers except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967’ – was 1967 a particularly bad winter? |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files. |
HACKER: |
‘Some records that went astray in the move to London, and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments’. Well, that’s pretty comprehensive. And how many does that normally leave for them to look at? |
[Sir Humphrey, silent, looks coy]
HACKER: |
How many does that actually leave? About a hundred? |
[Sir Humphrey remains silent as Hacker keeps guessing]
HACKER: |
Fifty? Ten? Five? Four? Three? Two? One?? … Zero??? |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Yes, Minister.20 |
One of the ways that the series tried to appear fresh and different was in its use of guest actors in unusually noteworthy roles. Two in particular – Eleanor Bron and Ian Lavender – would make key contributions to certain instalments of this set of shows.
This had been one aspect of the sitcom that had, behind the scenes, failed to take off during the previous series. Time and again, during the planning of the second set of episodes, one well-known actor after another had passed on a cameo role. Mel Smith, for example, had turned down the admittedly very small role of the militant union rep in ‘The Compassionate Society’ (it was taken over by Stephen Tate); Eleanor Bron had similarly passed on the offer of playing the tenacious select committee member Mrs Phillips in ‘The Quality of Life’ (Zulema Dene appeared in her place); and Billie Whitelaw had done the same when offered the part of Betty Oldham in ‘A Question of Loyalty’ (which was played by Judy Parfitt instead).21
Times, however, had changed, and the reputation of the sitcom had risen. The show, by this time, was much more of a talking point, as well as a more prestigious (and slightly better-paid) production, and, perhaps most importantly, the cameo roles were stronger and more appealing.
Eleanor Bron appeared in the opening episode, entitled ‘Equal Opportunities’, playing a strong, intelligent, charismatic woman who would end up seeming like the Yes Minister equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ Irene Adler. Conan Doyle’s unusually memorable female creation only appeared in one short story – ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ – but her alluringly independent personality left a profound impression on both Holmes and Watson, with his friend and chronicler recalling how her refulgent presence had threatened to be ‘a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all [Holmes’] mental results’.22 Similarly, Jay and Lynn’s character for Eleanor Bron, an up-and-coming Under-Secretary named Sarah Harrison, manages to intrigue and unnerve both Hacker and Sir Humphrey.
Hacker spots her working in his Department and is immediately struck by her beguiling combination of charm and expertise. Even Sir Humphrey, whose general awareness of the female sex has only normally amounted to the admission that his wife happens to be a woman, has definitely noticed Ms Harrison, and, as a self-confessed ‘great supporter’, admits that she is ‘very able, for a woman, er, for a person’.
Hacker – who is keen to promote gender equality (quite a topical issue given that the 1979 election had returned the lowest number of female MPs for nearly thirty years, amounting to a mere 3 per cent of the Commons, and only one woman – Baroness Young – had joined Margaret Thatcher in her Cabinet23) – sees Harrison as the ideal figurehead for his drive to establish a 25 per cent quota of women in senior administrative positions within the next four years, and thus plans to promote her to Deputy Secretary in his Department. Sir Humphrey, although he was responsible for her previous promotion, is opposed to this further rapid elevation on the grounds that ‘it’s not her turn yet’, but can see why his Minister is so keen on fast-tracking her rise to the top.
Both men, however, are in for a huge surprise when they summon her to impart the news of her imminent promotion. She listens, smiles and then politely turns them down, revealing that she is actually about to resign from the Civil Service to become a director at a merchant bank:
HACKER: |
[Stunned] You were to be my, so to speak, Trojan horse. |
HARRISON: |
Well, quite honestly, Minister, I want a job where I don’t spend endless hours circulating information that isn’t relevant about subjects that don’t matter to people who aren’t interested. I want a job where there’s achievement rather than merely activity. I’m tired of pushing paper. I want to be able to point at something and say: ‘I did that’. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
I don’t understand. |
HARRISON: |
I know. That’s why I’m leaving. |
Hacker is dumbfounded. Surely, he asks her, the government of Britain is an extraordinarily important and worthwhile thing? She smiles and agrees. The problem, she explains, is that she has not encountered anyone who appears to be doing it. She is also, she adds, tired of all the ‘pointless intrigue’, which, most recently, has seen him use her as just another pawn in the endless chess game.
He looks at her with a hurt expression:
HACKER: |
Sarah, you probably don’t realise this but I fought quite a battle for you. |
HARRISON: |
[Suddenly turning angry] Oh, have you? I didn’t ask you to fight a battle for me. I’m not pleased at being part of a twenty-five per cent quota. Women are not inferior beings and I don’t enjoy being patronised! I’m afraid you’re just as paternalist and chauvinist as the rest of them. I’m going somewhere where I shall be accepted on my own merits, as an equal, as a person. |
[As she leaves, Hacker, shaken and confused, looks over at a similarly bemused Sir Humphrey]
HACKER: |
You can’t win, can you? |
Sarah Harrison was, by a long way, the most coherent and fully formed female character that Jay and Lynn had written so far, which was particularly welcome seeing as Jim Hacker’s wife, Annie, remained a maddeningly inchoate figure (sometimes seeming pushy and principled, sometimes dazzled by shiny objects, and, in this episode, an outspoken advocate of positive gender discrimination until she discovers that her husband finds Sarah Harrison attractive, after which she turns her back on the whole idea).24 The presence of this character also served to highlight how insular and immature both the Minister and his Permanent Secretary remained, with both of them acting like overgrown schoolboys – one co-educational, one single-sex – when contemplating the issue of gender.
Ian Lavender was equally significant playing a figure who was obviously modelled on the real-life Civil Service whistle-blower Leslie Chapman. Called Dr Cartwright, an Under-Secretary with special but neglected expertise in local government, he, just like Chapman, is desperately hoping that an untamed politician will read his cost-cutting proposals and change departmental policies accordingly. Featured in two consecutive episodes – the first entitled ‘The Challenge’ and the second ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard’ – Dr Cartwright represented the enemy within as far as Sir Humphrey was concerned, slipping his Minister dangerously practical advice on the sly (‘brown envelope jobs’).
Hacker, on the other hand, can hardly believe his luck. Cartwright hands him a thick file full of information that can be used to shape a new policy and thus win him plenty of praise:
CARTWRIGHT: |
It’s all in here. |
HACKER: |
What’s this all about? |
CARTWRIGHT: |
Controlling expenditure. I’m proposing that all council officials responsible for a new project would have to list their criteria for failure before they were given the go-ahead. |
HACKER: |
What do you mean? |
CARTWRIGHT: |
It’s a basic scientific approach. You must first establish a method of measuring the success or failure of an experiment. Then when it’s completed you can tell whether it’s succeeded or failed. A proposal would have to state: ‘This scheme would be a failure if it lasts longer than this, or costs more than that, if it employs more staff than these, or fails to meet these pre-set performance standards’. |
HACKER: |
That’s fantastic, but you could never make it work. |
CARTWRIGHT: |
Of course you can! [Pointing at the file] It’s all in there. |
HACKER: |
Bernard, this is my top priority reading for the weekend! |
Cartwright is not only a threat to Sir Humphrey’s authority, but also, and more importantly, a threat to his relationship with Hacker, and so, after causing a suitable frisson within the Department, it is inevitable that this rogue agent will be removed:
The darkest and most interesting moments in the series, however, revolved around Hacker’s spasm of morality. Throughout the previous two series, and the first three episodes of this one, Hacker had been seen leaping through each one of the circles of Hell with all the mounting enthusiasm of an Olympic hurdler in sight of a gold medal, showing fewer and fewer qualms about diving into political problems and getting his hands completely dirty.
In the opening episode, for example, he only gets serious about promoting gender equality when he thinks it might suit his own personal ambitions, hoping that such a supposedly ‘principled’ policy will improve his reputation as a Minister and do some good at the polls. The same thing happens in the next episode, when he hears that something else might prove a vote winner. ‘A vote winner?’ he exclaims, his principles once again popping like punctured bubbles as he contemplates lending his name to a policy about which he is utterly unconvinced.25 In the third episode, he is at his most cynical and cruel so far, relishing the prospect of completely destroying the career of his Permanent Secretary for a thirty-year-old mistake, and only relenting after he has watched Sir Humphrey crumble in front of his eyes and agree to bend the rules for the sake of Hacker’s own party.
It comes as quite a surprise, therefore, when, rather implausibly, he suddenly teeters on the brink of the abyss and starts trying to pull back, lecturing everyone else on the need to do the right thing and generally behaving as though he now thinks he has a halo hovering above his head. He is full of self-righteous indignation in episode four, when, for example, he realises that a Government trade agreement has been secured through bribery (Sir Humphrey prefers to call it ‘creative negotiation’), and bristles at Sir Humphrey’s self-serving claim that ‘a cynic is what an idealist calls a realist’.26
This belated intrusion of scruples reaches a climax in the penultimate episode, ‘The Whisky Priest’ (which was partly inspired by Oilgate – a recent study about the 1960s sanctions scandal27), when Hacker, at his most self-deluded, attempts to act as moral arbiter for the whole of Whitehall and Westminster. Upon hearing some disturbing information from an army officer, the morally motivated Major Saunders, he marches into his Department determined to fight the good fight:
HACKER: |
Last night a confidential source disclosed to me that British arms are being sold to Italian red terrorist groups. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
I see. May I ask who this confidential source was? |
HACKER: |
Humphrey, I just said it was confidential. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Oh, I’m sorry, I naturally assumed that meant you were going to tell me. |
HACKER: |
|
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Well, these things happen all the time. It’s not our problem. |
HACKER: |
So does robbery with violence. Doesn’t that worry you? |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
No, Minister – Home Office problem. |
HACKER: |
Humphrey: we’re letting terrorists get hold of murderous weapons! |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
We’re not. |
HACKER: |
Well, who is? |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Who knows? The Department of Trade, Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office … |
HACKER: |
We, Humphrey. The British Government. Innocent lives are being set at risk by British arms in the hands of terrorists. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Only Italian lives. Not British lives. |
HACKER: |
Well, then, the British tourists abroad. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Tourists? Foreign Office problem. |
The Permanent Secretary warns his Minister that the sale of arms abroad is not a topic that rewards close scrutiny. ‘A basic rule of government,’ he notes, ‘is never look into anything you don’t have to, and never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.’ Hacker is insistent: ‘We’re talking about good and evil!’ ‘Ah,’ says Sir Humphrey brightly, ‘a Church of England problem.’
The Minister, suddenly wanting to keep his hands clean, protests that they should only be thinking about right and wrong, so Sir Humphrey decides to remind him of how the real world works. ‘Either you sell arms or you don’t,’ he points out. ‘If you sell them, they will inevitably end up with people who have the cash to buy them.’ Hacker, like a man who has just discovered soap, is still horrified by the grubbiness of all, and so, once again, Sir Humphrey feels obliged to give him a refresher lesson in deontological ethics: ‘May I point out to you that something is either morally wrong or it isn’t. It can’t be slightly morally wrong.’
Hacker, however, is having none of it. Displaying breathtaking hypocrisy, bearing in mind all of the dubious decisions he has happily made – in a spirit more akin to cant than Kant – since he came to office, he now seems to think of himself as a beacon of political virtue in a murky administrative world:
HACKER: |
For the first time I fully understand that you are purely committed to means and not to ends. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
Well, as far as I’m concerned, Minister, and all of my colleagues, there is no difference between means and ends. |
HACKER: |
[Sombrely] If you believe that, Humphrey, you will go to hell. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
[Smiling facetiously] Minister, I had no idea you had a theological bent. |
HACKER: |
You are a moral vacuum. |
SIR HUMPHREY: |
If you say so, Minister. |
Hacker, supremely pleased with his new self-delusion as the shining white knight of Westminster, strides off to alert the Prime Minister. Sir Humphrey, meanwhile, fears another Watergate, with an inquiry into this isolated issue leading ‘to one ghastly revelation after another’.
Hacker, however, never gets to see the PM. He is headed off by the Chief Whip, who has no time for this kind of ill-conceived crusade, endangering the signing of an international anti-terrorist agreement in ‘a fit of moral self-indulgence’. Just in case he has not scared Hacker enough by barking at him about Cabinet responsibility and party loyalty, the Chief Whip then hints that the Minister might also be on the brink of wrecking his own prospects of taking over the Foreign Office. This is quite enough to slap Hacker back into amorality.
He now has to silence Major Saunders, who still expects him to expose the dirty deal, but Sir Humphrey knows what will overcome this problem: ‘the Rhodesia Solution’. Back when there were oil sanctions against the country, a member of the British Government was informed that certain companies were flouting those sanctions, but, in order to avoid undermining such covert trading deals, he elected to tell the Prime Minister in such a way as to ensure that he failed to know that he had been told.
‘You write a note which is susceptible to misinterpretation,’ Sir Humphrey explains. Dictating to Woolley, he starts drafting the appropriate style of report: ‘My attention has been drawn, on a personal basis, to information which suggests the possibility of certain irregularities …’ Getting Woolley to insert a reference to the relevant piece of legislation (‘Section One of the Import, Export and Customs Powers [Defence] Act 1939’), he moves on to suggest that somebody else should do something about it – ‘Prima facie evidence suggests that there could be a case for further investigation to establish whether or not an inquiry should be put in hand’ – and then he smudges it all over – ‘Nevertheless, it should be stressed that available information is limited, and relevant facts could be difficult to establish with any degree of certainty’.
‘That’s most unclear,’ Hacker observes. ‘Thank you, Minister!’ Sir Humphrey replies. Once the Permanent Secretary has added his finishing touches to the trick, arranging for it to arrive at Number Ten on the day that the Prime Minister is due to fly off for an overseas summit (thus making it harder for anyone to tell whether it was the PM or the acting PM who actually saw the letter), Hacker knows that he, too, is well on his way to Hell.
Back at home, he lies on the couch, drunk on whisky, and whines to his wife:
HACKER: |
I’m a moral vacuum. |
ANNIE: |
Cheer up, darling. Nothing good ever comes out of Whitehall. You did what you could. |
HACKER: |
You don’t really mean that. |
ANNIE: |
I do. |
HACKER: |
Nah, I’m just like Humphrey and all the rest of them. |
ANNIE: |
Now that’s certainly not true. He’s lost his sense of right and wrong. You’ve still got yours. |
HACKER: |
Have I? |
ANNIE: |
It’s just that you don’t use it much. You’re a sort of whisky priest. You do at least know when you’ve done the wrong thing. |
HACKER: |
Whisky priest? |
ANNIE: |
That’s right. |
HACKER: |
[Thinking it over] Good … Let’s open another bottle. |
ANNIE: |
|
HACKER: |
That’s what you think! |
[He opens up one of his red boxes and produces a new bottle.]
HACKER: |
Who said nothing good ever came out of Whitehall? |
[He unscrews it]
|
Do you want one? |
ANNIE: |
Yes, Minister. |
It might not have made complete dramatic sense in the broader context of the sitcom as a whole, but as an episode it was certainly one of the highlights of an uneven third series. Far more effectively rendered than Sir Humphrey’s own personal crisis in ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard’ (which had seen Nigel Hawthorne overact so wildly – by his own supremely high standards – that he had the preternaturally self-controlled Permanent Secretary contort his face like a gargoyle and stuff a handkerchief inside his mouth), ‘The Whisky Priest’ was a classic Yes Minister comical critique. Perceptive, precise and pertinent, it did what the sitcom did best and made people think at the same time that it made them laugh.
Even the small, partial failures of the third series, however, had been noble failures, because they were the result of the team’s being bold and brave enough to eschew the line of least resistance and try instead to surprise, enlighten and delight. Watched by an enthusiastic audience each week (which would expand dramatically once the show was repeated on BBC1 in the summer of the following year), the run was as well received as its predecessors had been, and won several more awards, including BAFTAs for Best Comedy Series and, for Nigel Hawthorne, Best Light Entertainment Performance.
By way of a coda, a brief extra scene was recorded for a special seasonal show, The Funny Side of Christmas, which was broadcast on BBC1 on 27 December. Set on the day before the Minister escaped from Whitehall for the festive break, it had a flustered-looking Sir Humphrey rush into Hacker’s office to deliver an urgent message to the startled Minister:
It was a charming way to finish off an eventful year – the third in the lifetime of Yes Minister. The show had come a long way for a popular sitcom. It had established itself, it had polished itself and now it had pushed itself. The question now was: where, if anywhere, could and should it go from here?