Yes, Prime Minister: Re-elected Page #4

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busybodies on an ego trip

and the other half are only in it

for what they can get out of it.

Perhaps they ought

to be in the House of Commons?

Did you ever leak documents that you

should not have leaked?

No.

Oh!

No, I was not in the

leaking business.

And I think, by and large,

there is too much leaking.

All the time, again, through your

government there were regular leaks.

They were either leaks which were

unattributed or they were leaks

that came early and were clearly

a minister jostling for position.

I think what happens is,

round Westminster,

politicians talking to each other,

talking to journalists,

civil servants talking to each other

talking to journalists -

the chatter just gets out.

I think the problem is that

people talk too much.

I don't see that

necessarily as leaking.

And you do gossip, you lot,

don't you?

Yeah.

Nothing like as much

as press secretaries.

I didn't, I was like that.

THEY ALL LAUGH:

I was never a gossip.

You never revealed details of what

went on in Government in,

say, a book?

I mean, that would be...

What, my diaries?

We're not here to plug my diaries!

THEY LAUGH:

Well, why not?

It's available at all good bookshops.

Our Comedy Committee return

after a short recess,

when we discover what it's like

to be a real life Sir Humphrey.

They translated my title into

Japanese and back.

And they laughed

when I was introduced.

And I said, "What did they say?"

And he said, "They described

you as an eternal typist."

THEY ALL LAUGH:

Obviously,

that means I do the letters.

And the nation's favourite

Principal Private Secretary,

Bernard, meets a real life Bernard.

I remember once

when I went to Number Ten,

somebody came up to me

and said, "I'm Bernard".

I said, "No, I'm Bernard".

And he said,

"No, that person's Bernard,

"and the other bloke over there's

Bernard."

So you were Bernard?

I was Bernard, yeah.

Yes, Prime Minister, the show

that exposes the secretive

inner workings of Government,

has returned.

Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey

are still at war, only this time,

Scotland, Europe

and the fictional Kumranistan

are the sources of conflict.

I could be wrong.

Say that again.

But to discover how these battling

politicos became household names,

we have to reacquaint ourselves with

the original actors, Paul Eddington,

who played the Right Honourable Jim

Hacker, and Nigel Hawthorne

who embodied the entire civil

service as Sir Humphrey Appleby.

Both Hacker and Humphrey, on the

page, are not very likeable people.

And it's very important that they're

played by likeable actors.

Paul was very likeable.

I'd been watching him

since I was a kid.

I grew up in Bath

and I used to see Paul

at the Bristol Old Vic

quite often.

And then the Good Life had made him

into almost a star.

And it was obviously the right

moment for him.

Minister,

a minister can do what he likes.

It's the people's will.

I am their leader.

I must follow them.

Paul Eddington was just a lovely,

lovely comic actor.

He's a really...smiley,

genial kind of man.

And so he,

all of that goes into Jim Hacker.

Equally, he comes

across as intelligent

and as somebody with

a certain amount of bearing.

And I think you just get the sense

that he's a real person,

that he's vulnerable,

that he's human,

and that he sort of is

fundamentally quite nice as well.

Yes, of course, Minister,

it must be frightfully difficult

to concentrate

if you keep being woken up.

Steering Jim Hacker through

the choppy waters of Whitehall

was the Permanent Secretary

for the DAA, Sir Humphrey Appleby.

The great thing about Nigel

is that he was very good at playing

establishment figures

with interesting layers of other

thoughts going on underneath.

May I come in, Minister?

Sit down, Humphrey.

And perhaps one of the most

anticipated parts of every episode

was Sir Humphrey's big speech.

Well, it was a conversation to the

effect that, in view of the somewhat

nebulous and inexplicit nature

of your remit,

and the arguably marginal and

peripheral nature of your influence

on the central deliberations

and decisions within

the political process,

that there could be a case

for restructuring

their action priorities in such a

way as to eliminate your liquidation

from their immediate agenda.

You really do believe that Sir

Humphrey exists, because surely no

actor could ever become a character

that duplicitous and verbose.

So to create this extraordinary

character, this duplicitous,

Machiavellian, dreadful man,

saying yes when he meant no,

was an amazing achievement.

They said that?

That was the gist of it.

He made a deal with us

very early on that we wouldn't

change any of those long speeches

within three weeks of starting

rehearsal for a particular episode.

And when it came to

the end of a series,

he still had every single speech by

heart, which I thought was awful,

to have a perfectly decent mind

cluttered up with that junk.

Yes.

Yes, he didn't seem

to have a mental shredder.

No.

Bamboozling hapless ministers is

top of Sir Humphrey's agenda.

But how true to life is this

relationship between

the civil service and ministers?

Our Committee for Comedy Analysis

are on hand to shed light

on this very private partnership.

Gus, did you ever feel

yourself...I mean, I'd say of

the Cabinet Secretaries that

I knew, that you were sort of,

this is a compliment, the least

Sir Humphreyish, in many, many ways.

There were some moments.

I would, I would sometimes default to

my background of being an economist.

I mean, one of the Yes, Minister

episodes has this thing about,

as a specialist,

you can never make it to the top.

And I would find myself talking

about, you can imagine who with,

neo-classical endogenous

growth theory,

and you'd think that Humphrey

would have loved this.

It was like, I remember that time

when he says,

"Your current conversational

interlocutor is the person

"who usually refers to themselves by

use of the perpendicular pronoun."

I thought,

"I could never have said that."

It's just so brilliant.

Did you ever feel,

as a civil servant,

did you ever feel that you actually

had more power than a minister?

No.

Never?

Never.

You do spend a lot of your time

saying, "Are you sure, Minister?"

You know, you want to make

an announcement, particularly,

I'd say, at party conference, there's

been no work done on it, no one's

looked at is this feasible, could we

do it, how much is it going to cost?

Announcements out of the blue,

it is our job, we do say,

"Stop, think."

That's why I think we

get the reputation of being cautious.

Yes, Minister is spot on because

when Hacker goes into his office

and the Permanent Secretary reels

out this long list of secretaries,

"I'm the Permanent secretary.

I have

a Principal Private Secretary, you

"have a Principal Private Secretary,

they have Private Secretaries.

"You will appoint a Parliamentary

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