"Britain's Best Sitcom" - Yes minister (2/4)

one's own country must come first how true although strictly this isn't the government matter Minister I personally would be deeply sorry to lose you okay that's timing that Minister most sincerely that's often that's hungry yes I suppose we have got rather fond of one another get away in a way like a terrorist to this hostage which one of you is the terrorist but there were three people in this relationship and the third person Bernard is my next reason he was played by Derek folds and he had the most difficult acting job of the law because Bernard had to spend long patches of time saying nothing and yet looking interested in everyone else's utter gaffe and yet when Bernard opened his mouth to speak his one-line frequently had to be the funniest of the lot the only way to understand the press is to remember that they pander to their readers prejudices don't tell me about the press I know exactly who reads the papers the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people around the Canada Financial Times is read by people who own the country the morning stars read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is I'm glad Minister what about the people who read the Sun Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits Barnard is pretty essential to the structure of the comedy both hacker and sir Humphrey confide in him which means we get to find out what they're plotting next useful jabs Bernhard good job it never dull players he was extremely clever very well educated very bright and played both sides he would say that he was both sides of Center with slight leanings to the left and right Birds particular sort of pedantry for something that he brought out really well I thought fast the nettle take the bull by the horns i Minister you can't take the bull by the horns if you're grasping the neck really a burner all I meant was if you grasp the nettle with one hand you could take the bull by one horn but the other hand but not both horns because your hand isn't big enough if you did take the bull by one horn it would be rather dangerous because he was the release in the middle of it you know that he would puncture it every so often and we were all glad that that happened so difficult for me you see as I'm wearing two hats yes isn't that rather awkward for you not if a1 is in two minds or has two faces I thought what am I going to do with this part so I had tiny glasses and I talked terribly like that I thought you know he's a civil servant and a PPS he might talk like that I'd worked on this character so I got him into the taxi with mr. hacker outside number ten tops hit amazing why are you wearing those gloves I said I I thought they're rather good for the character so terror will take them off I think why are you talking why you talking in that funny voice I said I thought about good yes it's awful should just be you sorry to appear stupid perish the thought burn Nigel and Derrick and Paul were wonderful together they were naughty together lot of giggling used to go on he's coming around now my daddy feet no he's just you know it's a pseudo sperm they say you can see Derek and Minnie recording his slightly wicked grin creeping across his face totally involuntary and Nigel he adored each other always did and so did Derek and Paul because they they got along terribly well Paul and I'd always so generous to me I know that after the first or second series they both went to the writers and said I think you should write more for Derek I think we should be more of a trio and they were just wonderful Enquirer has never found the true source of a leak but we know the true source prime minister you asked us Turner you're not suggesting that I authorized the sleek I hope I know I that is yes sir I mean but oh I remember now sorry what do you remember Ben whatever you want Yes Minister was more than a sitcom it was actually the first and best guidebook we had to how the country was run viewers to the program were the first to discover two pretty shocking things one the country wasn't being run by our elected politicians but by Sir Humphrey and his colleagues from a gentlemen's club and to run is the wrong word because that implies activity the country was in fact being expertly kept at a standstill taxation isn't about what you mean Prime Minister the Treasury doesn't work out what they need to spend and then think how to raise the money positi they pitch for as much as they think they can get away with it it did make people more politically aware they could they looked at things and thought that's almost that's almost could could be true may I suggest that instead of trying to butter up the press we distract them let's give them a story better start a war that sort of thing he had huge following in the sense it was quite didactic it was by far the best way to learn about the internal workings of politics it was better than any series of documentaries today where we explained that selective education is divisive and to the Tories we explain that it is expensive that way we have a happy relationship with the Nu G and we educate our own children privately drug food cartons Britain and what we did was reveal to the public it was already widely known in government circles we reveal to the public that it's largely the civil service that runs the country eyes that were to leak shocking though elite would be no shocking shocking it would be profoundly embarrassing for the Prime Minister I can't think why I didn't think of it before nor can i I will love other comedy series which have been warm hearted and sweet and funny and about family setups and and very wonderful they are too but this went for the jugular Europe is a community of nations dedicated towards one goal oh maybe share the joke a minister let's look at this objectively it is a game played for national interests and always was why do you suppose we went into it to strengthen the Brotherhood of free Western nations really we went it to screw the French by splitting them off from the German why did the French go into it then what to protect their inefficient farmers from commercial competition it certainly doesn't apply to the Germans no no they went in to cleanse themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race I really think that yes Minister is up there with George Orwell's 1984 in how powerfully it's influenced our view of the state except that there aren't as many laughs and all well the program provided us with a pretty accurate warning of horrors of spin and it taught us how to unpick the verbal tricks that politicians think they can get away with in front of the cameras and that means that today if an MP starts to sound like they're a character from Yes Minister they're pretty much dead in the water yes I said I'm glad you asked me that question because it's a question a lot of people are asking because a lot of people want to know the answer to I find hypocrisy and the two-faced behavior of public figures both hard to deal with and extremely funny in fact I think the only way to deal with it is to laugh at them I was entitled to express my views I was entitled to be consulted threatened to hide I was not entitled to instruct Derek Lewis and I did not instruct him this is how you deal with questions if you had nothing to say say nothing let's still have something to say and say it I did not overrule him I did not overrule Jerry did you threaten to overrule I took advice on what I could or could not do you threatened I overruled him seriously in accordance with that advice pay no attention to the question just make your own statement I am sorry it's in quaking straightness or Nelson and I was I will give you now I'll give you an idea threaten to overrule him then if they ask the question again what you say is that stop the question I think the real question is and then you make another statement of your oh I know you're not answering the question whether you threaten well to overrule him the the important aspect of this which it's very clear to bear in mind when I was at Cambridge I joined the Union Society in my first term because I thought I was might be interested in coming into politics one day and all the main debaters their age 20 were the most pompous self-satisfied self-important bunch of clowns that I've ever clapped eyes on and they were all behaving as if they were on the government front bench and 20 years later they all were you know Michael Howard and John Selwyn Gummer and kind of clerked all these people they were the people who were the big cheese's at the Cambridge Union Society and I thought at that point the only thing I could ever contribute to politics is making fun of the politicians please let me finish because we must be absolutely clear about this and I want to be quite frank with you the plain fact of the matter is that at the end of the day it is the right near the duty of the elected government in the House of Commons to ensure that government policy the policies on which we were elected and for which we have a mandate the policies after all for which the people voted are the policy which finally when the national cake has been divided up and may I remind you we as a nation don't have unlimited wealth there we can't pay ourselves more than we burn how the policies I'm sorry what was the question like most sequels yes Prime Minister could have stretched a point too far but if anything it became a lot sharper in making Jim hacker prime minister the writers were then able to take a swipe at the whole political process and to those who say that someone as inept as hacker couldn't possibly get so high up the ladder I say look at Lord falconer Falconer was a fundamentally likable but burka Sh minister under Blair who went on to make a complete dogs turd of the Millennium Dome so where's he ended up his Lord Chancellor in charge of the entire system of justice I rest my bloody case what would you say to your present master as the next prime minister the end of the third series of Yes Minister the boys the writers thought that would be it because they didn't know where they could take him and they thought they might be in danger of repeating themselves are you in a hurry and I'm just checking to see it wasn't April the first the means he did presses to go on and we thought well if we made him prime minister we'd um gosh then you know we'd have a whole lot of new material to write about and so we thought how could we possibly do that Maggie mitten you mean don't mean I don't think that Jim hacker would ever have been thought of naturally as a prime minister but funny things happen and they did it might just be possible that an unlikely figure rather in the way that Alec douglas-home was really quite unlikely in 1963 it just might happen that the owner at least we could get away with that and so that's how he did it yes yes yes he's here I'll tell him did it yes Prime Minister it's great watching the dialogue ping around the three central characters and again the writers have set themselves some pretty brave challenges here there's very little swearing and no knob gags instead language itself becomes a joke great verbal contortions and confusions tumble out of everyone's mouths and the most famous of these are of course some free speeches will you give me a straight answer to a straight question oh well Minister as long as you are not asking me to resort to crude generalizations and vulgar oversimplification such as a simple yes or no I shall do my utmost to align yes we love the the idea of the ship coherence and articulate sea of Sir Humphrey the way the way he comes me always know the big speech is going to happen it's one things you look forward to in every episode of yes ministers when's he gonna do his bit and can I see if he's actually reading an idiot bored my god he isn't he's really learnt it and it's superb

Channel: Humphrey Appleby

Views: 1,042,166

Keywords: Best, sitcom, Yes, minister

Id: Arc-zyK6r5o

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 27 2010