Abigoliah: Hello there. This is All British Comedy Explained, a podcast in which I finally learn about all the British comedy shows I’ve been missing out on. I’m comedian Abigoliah Schamaun, and to guide us through our comedy labyrinth is writer Tom Salinsky.
Tom: Hello there.
Abigoliah: Hello, Tom. How are you?
Tom: I’m good, I’m good. Today we’re going to take a walk down the shadowy corridors of Whitehall.
Abigoliah: Ooh. And what will we be watching?
Tom: We’ll be watching Yes, Minister.
Abigoliah: I cannot wait, because you’ve been talking about this forever.
Tom: It’s such a favourite of mine, and I don’t know if it’s going to work for you or not. I think it probably will, but I can think of reasons why you might go, not for me. See why it’s good, but not for me.
Abigoliah: Is it because it’s mean? Is it because it’s vinegary and I’ll have complicated feelings?
Tom: No. It’s a little bit. It’s not warm the way The Good Life is, but it’s not vinegary the way The Office is. But it’s quite kind of brittle.
Abigoliah: Yeah. Okay.
Abigoliah: All right. We’ll see. And listeners, if you like our chat here about Yes, Prime Minister, we also have a Patreon where we do mini episodes. At £3 a month, you can get everything in the main feed ad-free. For £5 a month, you get the main feed ad-free, and you also get a special mini episode where we tackle a question related to the show we are covering. And this week, what will the question be that we cover?
Tom: Well, you’ll understand why when we’ve watched it and we’ve talked about it, but I think we should discuss: is it possible to recast an iconic character?
Abigoliah: All right. I already have my feelings. Oh, before we do this, can I just say, at the time of recording—because we always record way ahead of time—there is a great sitcom on BBC right now called Dinosaur. Oh, it is. It stars Ashley Storrie.
Tom: Oh, yes.
Abigoliah: It’s fabulous. They did season one last year, season two is out now. It is the one British comedy I have watched. It’s fabulous. So guys, just go check that out. Please go check out Ashley Storrie’s sitcom.
Tom: If we’re plugging current sitcoms, let me plug Small Profits.
Abigoliah: What’s Small Profits?
Tom: So there’s a BBC sitcom—a kind of comedy drama, really—written and directed by Mackenzie Crook from The Office, starring Pearce Quigley. And it’s the most original, delightful blend of character, comedy and little bits of fantasy. Michael Palin has a small role in it. It’s really, really lovely.
Abigoliah: I appreciate how you have realised in this podcast we’ve only covered BBC sitcoms, and even our listeners in the comments are like, why only BBC? Branch out. And when we are promoting modern sitcoms, we’re like, no, we are a one-channel podcast. That’s who we are. No, we will diversify.
Tom: My plans for series three are still taking shape, but I think we’re going to come out of the gate strong with an ITV show.
Abigoliah: All right. Well, that’s very far away.
Tom: Well, I mean, this is episode seven.
Abigoliah: Oh, shit. We’re already there. Okay, on that note—also buy my book. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that enough. Guys, I have a book out right now called Neurodivergent Moments: Sex, Sunscreen, Turtles and How Not to Pack a Suitcase. You can pre-order it depending on when this comes out, or it’s out June 18th—but pre-order it and buy it on June 18th. Just buy a bunch of them. It’s good presents.
Tom: Give them to—
Abigoliah: —your friends. And you have your play out now?
Tom: Yes. I think by the time this goes out, the play will be over. So I’m sorry it didn’t do better, or I’m amazed at how well it did.
Abigoliah: Okay. Well, I’m glad it’s gone so well.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Sold out every night. Thanks to you, dear listeners. Thanks for showing up to our live work. Anyways—okay, let’s get back. Yeah. Yes, Minister. Yes, Prime Minister.
Tom: Yes.
Abigoliah: Tell me.
Tom: The show morphed—well, let’s start with Yes, Minister. That began airing in 1980. Okay. That’s the year that Pac-Man was launched in Japan.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: It’s the year CNN started transmitting.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow.
Tom: Dallas was keeping American viewers in suspense with the “Who Shot J.R.?” storyline, which you must have heard of even if you don’t remember it happening.
Abigoliah: It turned out it doesn’t matter. It was all a dream.
Tom: And Ronald Reagan was elected US president, beating Jimmy Carter in a landslide.
Abigoliah: Well, we can’t get everything right. You know, I feel like America does that sometimes.
Tom: All right. But this is not going to be about American government. This is going to be about British government. And it begins with a guy called Antony Jay. Okay, so a lot of different strands from previous episodes are going to come together here. Antony Jay was a journalist. He worked on BBC current affairs shows since the 1950s. And then also Jonathan Lynn—he had been part of the Cambridge Footlights.
Abigoliah: We’ve talked about him before.
Tom: We might have mentioned him briefly, because he was one of the people who was working for John Cleese’s Video Arts company.
Abigoliah: That’s where his name came up. I knew—I was like, I’ve heard that one.
Tom: He was a contemporary of Eric Idle and Tim Brooke-Taylor, so just a tiny bit younger than John Cleese. He was pursuing a career as an actor and a writer. And around the time that John Cleese is having to devote more time to Fawlty Towers, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn started writing together for John Cleese’s Video Arts company. Lynn was fascinated by Jay’s experiences with politicians, because he was a journalist, and they began to conceive of a sitcom which would pit an inexperienced government minister against the bureaucracy of the civil service. So, Abigoliah, it is now time for a quick British government—I guess you’d call it a civics lesson.
Abigoliah: Okay. I feel like I haven’t learned much about comedy, but I feel like I have stayed up on the politics. It’s all so riveting over here.
Tom: So the British people are represented by around 650 Members of Parliament, MPs. After a general election, the party with the majority of MPs forms a government.
Abigoliah: Which, man, That really threw me for a loop the first time I was here for a general election.
Tom: It happens.
Abigoliah: Like that—and I was like, so who are you voting for? For prime minister? And everyone’s like, that’s not how it works. We don’t vote for our prime minister.
Tom: Your local representative, your MP. After the King has invited the leader of the largest party to form a government in his name, the prime minister selects a cabinet, and that cabinet is selected from the MPs that represent that party. So there’ll be posts like Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and so on. Each of those ministers who are elected will oversee a government department staffed by an army of permanent members of staff known as civil servants.
Abigoliah: And they can get fired like that.
Tom: Well—today they can.
Abigoliah: Which begs the question, when this comes out, will Keir Starmer still be prime minister?
Tom: I suspect so, yeah. But it is not guaranteed.
Abigoliah: I mean, people are talking.
Tom: Yeah, they are.
Abigoliah: But Labour—they’re not the Tories. The Tories, you know, they love firing their prime ministers. Oh my God. At one point—fun fact, because this again just blew my mind open—I’ve lived here for 11 years, I’ve been alive for 40. I have seen more prime ministers in 11 years living in the UK than I have known presidents in my entire lifetime, because at one point the Tory party was just firing them every—
Tom: Six months, left and right. Yeah. But it was this combination that caught Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay: the contrast between, as you rightly say, transitory politicians always looking for ways to boost their popularity, and the rarely changing government officials whose primary interest was in maintaining the status quo.
Tom: They conceived of a smooth permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, and an enthusiastic but rather blundering minister, Gerry Hacker.
Abigoliah: And am I going to watch this now and be like, is he giving Boris vibes?
Tom: I doubt it.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: They deliberately obscured which party Hacker belonged to. And they invented a new government department for him to run—the Department of Administrative Affairs. So that was just to give them some flexibility. It allowed them to write stories about administering the health service one week and education the next, and so on. And they did an enormous amount of research. They devoured the diaries of Labour Cabinet minister Richard Crossman, a civil servant called Leslie Chapman, and they talked to lots of current and retired politicians and civil servants to get more insights and more ideas for stories.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Sometimes they had to resort to subterfuge to get the information that they wanted.
Abigoliah: What do you mean by “subterfuge”?
Tom: So they had a strong suspicion that the Home Office and the Foreign Office were feuding, but they were aware they couldn’t come out and ask that, because neither was going to admit it publicly. But in a private meeting with the Home Secretary, Jay asked, “Why do the Home Civil Service dislike the Foreign Civil Service so much?” And the Home Secretary replied, “Well, I think it’s partly because—” and so he admitted it by default.
Abigoliah: Oh, wow. That’s amazing that he caught him. And he asked him pretty bluntly, but once he gets someone comfortable—
Tom: Exactly.
Abigoliah: —insider information. I know some people who’ve gotten into filming content at Parliament, and those guys can be really strict about what you can film in Parliament, what you can’t. And I don’t know this, but they surmise it’s because their public persona is that—like specifically Labour and Tory—Tories were in power at the time, are always feuding. They don’t want B-roll of them talking to each other like they’re friends. They’re like, no, we’re enemies, and we can’t let people know that we’re civil to each other, or that we’re colleagues in any way. I just found that interesting.
Tom: I remember the first time they allowed cameras into the House of Commons.
Abigoliah: Oh, do you?
Tom: Yeah. It used to be the case that we only ever heard goings-on at the House of Commons on the radio.
Abigoliah: When did that happen?
Tom: I think it was in the 1990s.
Abigoliah: I was going to say, was it after Yes, Prime Minister, when people were like, no, we want to see it? Also, there’s a tunnel under Parliament that runs from Parliament to 10 Downing Street—I think this is what I’ve been told. I could be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure—or wherever the Members of Parliament work—to 10 Downing Street. So whenever they’re shown walking into 10 Downing Street to have a chat with the prime minister, it’s all for show. They could literally show up in there without anyone seeing them, but it’s like—it’s the theatre of politics.
Tom: Speaking of which—so they have these two main characters—
Abigoliah: I’m sorry, I just have to say, I’m pretty sure what I said is accurate, but I could be 100% wrong.
Tom: Sort it out. Say it like a true podcaster.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: There we go. Just say it with confidence.
Abigoliah: You know what they say: there’s a tunnel and they’re all friends. And vaccines will kill your children and turn the fucking frogs gay.
Tom: This is a real sidebar, real side quest. But you remember Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which was a big scandal at the time because it was making fun of religion? And there was a television programme that Michael Palin and John Cleese appeared on—I think it was Friday Night, Saturday Morning, hosted by Tim Rice. I don’t know why it was hosted by Tim Rice, but it was—the lyricist. And they had Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark on to put the case for the church, and John Cleese and Michael Palin putting the case for their film. And John Cleese, I think, quite relished the debate. But Michael Palin, who’s normally such a gentle fellow, was seriously insulted by the way they were talking. One of them—I think the bishop—said, “Oh, I mean, it’s a tenth-rate film, but you’ll get your 30 pieces of silver.”
Tom: I mean, really nasty stuff. But what drove Michael Palin absolutely bananas was when the recording was over and they went into the green room, the other two were all smiles going, “Well, that was a lovely bit of telly we just made. Oh, well done to us. Would you like a sherry?” Oh yeah—couldn’t stand it.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: That rudeness was just for show. Fuck you.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: Anyway, back to Yes, Minister. They felt they needed a third character who could be kind of between the other two. So they invented Hacker’s principal private secretary, Bernard Woolley. So because he is secretary to the minister, he could be expected to be loyal to Hacker, but as a civil servant and not a politician, he could be expected to be loyal to Sir Humphrey. So he’s poised between the two.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: So they have some storylines, they have a script, and in summer of 1977 they pitched the idea to the BBC’s head of comedy, James Gilbert. He liked it enormously, but to get approval for a pilot—which would mean spending actual money—he had to refer it upstairs to his boss, the head of Light Entertainment. He typed up a memo recommending it highly, sent the memo and the script through the BBC internal post, and waited for the response. While he was waiting, a BBC reshuffle took place.
Abigoliah: Oh no. Like a cabinet reshuffle.
Tom: Cabinet reshuffle. The incumbent head of Light Entertainment, a man called Bill Cotton, was promoted to Controller of BBC One, and the new head of Light Entertainment was James Gilbert—who walked into his office to find a memo and a script highly recommending a new show called Yes, Minister and suggesting that they make it into a pilot. He had to get approval from himself in order to get the go-ahead.
Abigoliah: That’s worked out, then.
Tom: It really did.
Abigoliah: I mean, because how many people do you know who have had shows in development, and then there’s a reshuffle in a production company and then your show is dead? Exactly. It’s just dead.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. This is the opposite. This is maybe my favourite story that I’ve found out so far in all our work on this podcast. And I love that it happened on Yes, Minister, which is a sitcom about bureaucracy.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: All right. So the new head of comedy was a name that has come up before—it is John Howard Davies. And he had some ideas for casting for Sir Humphrey. He suggested a stage actor called Nigel Hawthorne, who had been a big success in Privates on Parade at Stratford and in the West End. And as Jim Hacker—another name you’ve heard before—he picked Paul Eddington.
Abigoliah: Paul Eddington, who was in—oh no, I know this—
Tom: You do know.
Abigoliah: This. I do know this. He was in—The Good Life.
Tom: Yes, he was.
Abigoliah: Yes.
Tom: And because he had already played Jerry Leadbetter, rather than playing another Gerry, the MP was renamed Jim. So Gerry Hacker became Jim Hacker. Now, these are two terrific actors, but they were both a bit cautious, and they wanted to see more scripts before they committed. And Eddington actually said, I like the project, but I would actually rather play Sir Humphrey than Jim Hacker. They went through this sort of cycle where the writers would write another script and they’d say, oh yes, this is good, I’m still not quite sure. After four scripts had been written, eventually the writers said, do they want to do it or don’t they? And then they signed on.
Tom: Jonathan Lynn had considered playing Bernard himself, but he was already working on this show as a writer and running a theatre company in Cambridge, so it didn’t really seem practical. So the part went to a man called Derek Fowlds, who had been the human sidekick to the puppet Basil Brush for the past five years. Have you ever heard of Basil Brush?
Abigoliah: Yeah. So one year Basil did an Edinburgh show—
Tom: Oh yeah.
Abigoliah: —a couple of years ago, and there were all of these pictures showing up on my Instagram of everyone being like, guess who I just met with? The little—he’s a fox, right?
Tom: That’s right.
Abigoliah: Yes. Yeah, he’s a fox. And I was just like, who the fuck is this? But yeah, everyone was like—
Tom: It’s a weird thing, because he’s basically a ventriloquist puppet character—a lot of the characteristics you’d associate with that, like being cheeky and undermining—but instead of being done by a ventriloquist, he was always operated by a puppeteer out of sight, like a Muppet. So that did mean there was more flexibility. So Derek Fowlds was one of several people who played the role of stooge to Basil Brush over the years.
Abigoliah: Yeah. So Basil Brush isn’t as wholesome as, say, like Lamb Chop.
Tom: No, not quite. Okay. More like a cheeky ventriloquist puppet.
Abigoliah: Okay. Yeah.
Tom: The pilot was shot in 1979 in the usual way: a few days of location filming, a week of rehearsals in Acton, and then a recording in front of a studio audience. The director was a man called Stuart Allen, who had plenty of experience, but almost all of it with a rather broader style of comedy than the verbal fencing and sharp satire of the Yes, Minister script.
Abigoliah: So what did he do before?
Tom: He was most famous for a show called On the Buses, which again has come up once or twice before. Very broad ITV sitcom. Lots of crude, sexist humour and people pulling faces and falling over. And sure enough, during rehearsals Stuart Allen kept adding bits of slapstick, new jokes, bits of business—and after several days the elegant script started to seem more like panto.
Abigoliah: So the writers weren’t happy with that.
Tom: When Jonathan Lynn saw what was happening, he was incensed. And in that moment he was unable to get hold of his writing partner or his agent or anyone else at the BBC. But he nevertheless told the director: go back to doing this the way it’s written, or we will withdraw our script.
Abigoliah: Oh wow—you can do that after it’s already—
Tom: He didn’t know.
Abigoliah: He just threatened it.
Tom: He just threatened it, exactly.
Abigoliah: And I’ve done that before in contract negotiations—been like, I’ll walk. And people have been like, you can’t walk. And I’m like, I don’t know, I can walk.
Tom: It all got quite tense. And eventually the actors were like, Stuart, should we have a go at doing it the way it was written? And then he relented.
Abigoliah: And then Jonathan Lynn won.
Tom: Yes. Yeah, yeah. So when they put it in front of the audience, I think Stuart Allen was like, you’ll be lucky if this gets a titter. You should have done it the way I wanted to do it. But the studio audience got it straight away.
Abigoliah: Wow. I love it when people are right and show other people.
Tom: When the series was commissioned, Stuart Allen was not invited to come back and direct any more.
Abigoliah: Well, I mean, to be fair, obviously you don’t want to lose work, but he didn’t get the vibe. There was a vibe and he didn’t get it. And if he had stayed on, I wonder if he would have been happy making it, because he’d be making something he doesn’t—
Tom: Exactly. Yeah. He was a bad fit. But something else was happening in 1979 which meant that the BBC was nervous about making more episodes of Yes, Minister, let alone transmitting them.
Abigoliah: Margaret Thatcher.
Tom: Correct. The general election had to come and go first. So it was only after the Conservatives won their historic landslide that production on the series resumed. And then once they started shooting that first series, the writers became aware that their leading men had very different approaches to the material. Paul Eddington was extremely interested in politics and always wanted to understand how this week’s storyline related to current events of the day. But these conversations bored Nigel Hawthorne to death. He was much more interested in Sir Humphrey being compared to Shakespearean characters like Iago or Malvolio.
Abigoliah: Oh wow. Okay. I was thinking Falstaff, but he went real big.
Tom: Okay. Likewise, the left-leaning Jonathan Lynn was always much more apt to side with Jim Hacker, whereas the more conservative Antony Jay always wanted to look out for Sir Humphrey. And I think that does give the episodes real balance, both between those two personalities and—because like I said, one of the things that was often remarked about when Yes, Minister went out is that it’s clearly about the political system, which we all know.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: The entire run of the show takes place under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, but it’s never made clear which party Jim Hacker is a member of. Labour and Conservative—those words are never spoken on screen.
Abigoliah: Yeah. I wonder if it helps that in the time that it came out that there was a female prime minister—the first—because then no one was comparing them. Because, so, The West Wing is a show that I loved and watched, and President Bartlet was constantly compared to President Clinton, who was the president at the time.
om: But Bartlet is explicitly a Democrat. Yeah, that’s well iterated over and over again. That’s the only difference.
Abigoliah: So yeah—and yes—but because he was a Democrat and because Clinton was president, everyone was like, oh, do they align? Are they the same?
Tom: And the weird thing about The West Wing is it’s very clear what year events take place in, including when elections take place. And it’s also explicit that previous presidents match up with real historical presidents—but the election years don’t match up. Yeah. Two years out.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Anyway, the first series of Yes, Minister went out at 9 p.m. on BBC Two to a modest audience, but some warm reviews, including from former Labour cabinet minister Roy Hattersley.
Abigoliah: Oh, do we like Roy, or—
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s a great guy. Yeah. Viewing figures built steadily. The series was repeated on BBC One, where more people watched it, and a second series followed in ’81 and then a third in ’82. But after three series of seven episodes, there was a general consensus that the time might be coming close to maybe think about wrapping this up—not least because one of its biggest fans turned out to be one Margaret Thatcher.
Abigoliah: Oh—and they didn’t want—
Tom: I mean, it’s a bit of a weird situation.
Abigoliah: A bad brand? Were they like, we don’t—it’s weird to be like, we don’t want that one specific person to like our show.
Tom: So actually it’s a bit more complicated than that. So Yes, Minister had the somewhat dubious honour of winning an award for wholesome television from Mary Whitehouse. Now, I can’t remember—has Mary Whitehouse come up before?
Abigoliah: I don’t think so. But maybe—can you jog my memory?
Tom: She was this elderly, eccentric, glasses-wearing, self-appointed television busybody.
Abigoliah: My future.
Tom: She created an organisation called the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, which she just invented out of whole cloth.
Abigoliah: Is there a Netflix show about her?
Tom: I don’t believe so—but there might be.
Abigoliah: Did she kind of try to get certain stuff cancelled?
Tom: Exactly.
Abigoliah: I know who she is. I know who she is. I don’t think she’s come up, but there’s like a movie about her as the most hated woman in Britain because she tears down shows and is like, they’re bad, they’re unwholesome. Okay, so she called it wholesome. Yeah. All right—that’s a nail in the comedy coffin.
Tom: Exactly. And also, just for further context, one previous recipient of this award was Jimmy Savile.
Abigoliah: Oh no. She chose wrong. These people are not wholesome. Her legacy is bad.
Tom: Exactly. So Mary Whitehouse has the idea that because Margaret Thatcher is such a fan of the show, she should be asked to bestow this award to the team at a ceremony that she is going to create. And Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham, says, let’s go one step further—let’s have you perform a Yes, Minister sketch with Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne.
Abigoliah: Oh no.
Tom: And this was, of course, written by Bernard Ingham, not by the actual writers of the show.
Abigoliah: Yes.
Tom: In fact, they knew nothing about it until it was far too late.
Abigoliah: But wouldn’t they have had to get approval to, like, show up and do the sketch?
Tom: Approval from who?
Abigoliah: I don’t know.
Tom: It’s the prime minister.
Abigoliah: Yeah, but the prime minister—I mean, she’s not the King. She can’t do a royal command performance. She basically tried to Good Life them and be like, I want to be a part of it all. Yeah, yeah. But she’s an elected official. She’s not a sovereign. She’s not allowed to do this. I knew I didn’t like Margaret Thatcher. You know what—I could never put my finger on why, and now I know.
Tom: And you can see the whole thing on YouTube—the quality is rather bad.
Tom: It’s all pretty embarrassing.
Abigoliah: So they did do it?
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: They did. Oh God.
Tom: But at this time Yes, Minister had been off the air for a while, and the fact of this terrible sketch existing did kind of put it back on the agenda. And so before long, the BBC were trying to tempt the writers back into the fold, and eventually they made a deal. The BBC would have to commit to two series of eight episodes plus a Christmas special. And there was one detail they liked from the Thatcher debacle, and that was depicting the prime minister.
Abigoliah: So this is how we get from Yes, Minister to Yes, Prime Minister.
Tom: Exactly. So in Yes, Minister, the prime minister is referred to but never seen. But in the Christmas special, which went out in December 1984, machinations in Whitehall and within the party see Jim Hacker MP made prime minister. And that paves the way for a January 1986 series of Yes, Prime Minister, with Sir Humphrey likewise promoted to Cabinet Secretary.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: The only snag was Paul Eddington said he would only agree to return if they scrapped the live studio audience.
Abigoliah: Wait—what year is this again?
Tom: 1986.
Abigoliah: Okay, so we’re talking pre-The Office.
Tom: Fifteen years before The Office.
Abigoliah: And did they do it?
Tom: No.
Abigoliah: Okay. I was going to say—are they the real people, the, you know—
Tom: Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn—the writers—both refused. And I think maybe they remembered the debacle of the pilot, where Stuart Allen had said the studio audience won’t get this, and then Stuart Allen was proven wrong. So if there’s an audience, they’re laughing at all the jokes—that is a safeguard against accusations of the script being very clever but not actually funny. Yeah—100%. It’s funny. Listen to that laughter. So they won the argument and the series went ahead, studio audience and all.
Tom: So that’s quite a long preamble today. But we’re going to watch the very first episode of Yes, Minister, which sets up the concept, and then we’ll watch a very typical episode of Yes, Prime Minister—the first episode of the second series. Okay. What are you expecting?
Abigoliah: There will be a storyline around a really mundane bit of policy, but it’s blown out of proportion. So something about—because Members of Parliament have their constituencies—so it’ll be like, you know, big day in—
Tom: Islington.
Abigoliah: —that specific constituency or something like that, I think. And there’ll be a cat—
Tom: I don’t recall a cat. The stuff about local party politics intersecting with Westminster and Whitehall is very shrewd, but I don’t know if it comes up in these two specific episodes.
Abigoliah: Okay. All right. Well, we’ll see. All right. I’m excited to see this.
Tom: Having consumed both orally and visually two separate episodic instalments of the comedic work under current consideration, it is perhaps advisable for me—without wanting to conjure any adverse inferences or to influence your honest and heartfelt reaction in any way—to inquire about your reactions at the present moment, in order that such reactions could be encoded electronically and distributed to a waiting nation.
Abigoliah: I want Sir Humphrey Appleby to be my mentor. I want to move through the world like him—changing minds without ever having your fingerprints on it, yet ruling the world quietly. I loved it.
Abigoliah: I’m so pleased. I loved Yes, Prime Minister. Yes, Minister. I thought it was great. First of all, I do—as I think we’ve talked about a lot of times—turn off my head. I love dramas, and I love a political drama, but this is a political comedy and it’s so good. And it begs the question: why have I been watching the news and following—like when there is a general election—following it and watching the debates and such to learn about British government, when I could have just watched Prime Minister’s Questions—this Prime Minister’s Questions—no, but I do watch that. And if you want a comedy, tune in on Wednesdays at noon.
Tom: But you could be watching Yes, Minister.
Abigoliah: I could be watching Yes, Minister. It’s so good. And you were saying that the original director wanted to make it slapstick—him—the only thing that I could think would be really funny slapstick is that very first scene where he’s waiting for the phone. If this had been a broader physical comedy, it would have completely gotten in the way.
Tom: Absolutely.
Abigoliah: And I think would have just specifically ruined Nigel Hawthorne’s character, because it’s all about the eyebrows for him. Yeah—just a bit of a raise and a bit of a this and a bit of that. Well, I don’t know—it’s just—I thought it was great. The line: “There are two types of minister chairs: the one that swivels and the one that folds—”
Tom: —up.
Abigoliah: —is so good.
Tom: Oh yeah. The line that I thought should have got more—one of my favourite lines, and I can’t believe it gets nothing from the studio audience—is Paul Eddington says, “Don’t forget, every problem is merely an opportunity in disguise,” and Nigel Hawthorne says, “I think the Secretary of State is concerned this may create some insoluble opportunities,” which is just—that’s just perfection.
Abigoliah: I feel like we’ve talked about other shows that are really quotable and have catchphrases—you know, “uni-dexter” or—
Tom: “I’ve nothing against your right leg.”
Abigoliah: Yes—and—
Tom: “Don’t mention the war.”
Abigoliah: “Don’t mention the war.” And “I didn’t get to where I am today.” Yes. This feels really quotable. Was this quotable, or is it too clever to be quotable?
Tom: It’s a little bit too clever to be quotable. Also, it’s sort of the attitudes—so things like “always dispose of the tricky part in the title does less damage there,” those kind of things. Or there’s one episode of Yes, Prime Minister where the prime minister has to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and they’re going through the candidates: “Well, we can’t appoint him.” “Why not?” “He believes in God.” So all those kind of casual dismissals of what are seen as obvious truths—it’s so elegantly done. They were magpies. There’s a famous section where Hacker reels off a whole thing about what kind of people read what paper. So The Times is read by people who run the country, The Telegraph is read by people who think they ought to run the country, The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country, and so on. Those have been doing the rounds since the 1960s in different versions. So they are magpies—they are just stealing stuff. But that’s what great artists do.
Abigoliah: Well, it just feels like so many of the quotes that comment on government are still accurate comments about government today. And that’s why I’m so surprised that literally newscasters don’t quote—like, “well, you know, there are two types of prime ministers, the ones who swivel around, the ones who fold”—I’m fucking up the line, but yeah. And I think Nigel Hawthorne is great. He’s so understated but so broad in his face. But every—you know, just the character’s way of actually running the country. So is Sir Humphrey—he’s like the—in America it would be chief of staff.
Tom: Yes, I suppose so. The distinction is less marked, not least because in America the cabinet can be appointed from anybody, so they aren’t elected politicians in the same way. So that tension between an elected politician, who depends on personal popularity to still be in the job next week, and the complacency of the permanent members of staff who populate the civil service isn’t quite so apparent. But yeah, he’s not too far removed from being a chief of staff. And obviously the great political drama House of Cards, with Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart—
Tom: It was very successfully remade.
Abigoliah: We’re talking about the British one.
Tom: Yeah. It was successfully remade for the American market. Actually, it was the first Netflix original—House of Cards with Kevin—whatever happened to Kevin Spacey?
Abigoliah: I don’t know.
Tom: I am Frank Underwood.
Abigoliah: Fun fact: the noise when you turn on Netflix is from House of Cards.
Tom: That’s right, it is—it’s him banging on the table.
Abigoliah: Yes, that’s what that is. They’ve kept that. They’ve gotten rid of the show and—forget everything, forget it ever happened, we didn’t see it. Also, the conversation in the first episode about how he ran on open government, and how they’re all like, no, that’s not actually what we’re going to do again—it reminded me of, in American politics, campaign finance reform.
Tom: Oh yes.
Abigoliah: It’s always a big topic when everyone’s running. Everyone discusses it. And then—it is in an episode of The West Wing where it’s like, okay, we ran on campaign finance reform, let’s fix it. And all of the congressmen are like, oh, presidency—we are in the majority—we don’t want to fuck with campaign finance reform now. And he’s like, but this is when we can fix it. He’s like, yes, but this is when it’s working in our favour. And it’s just—it’s the same with open government. It’s like we want open government, but not—not where the government—no, we don’t want people to know how we make the sausage. I thought it was great. Obviously it’s very male-heavy. Does his wife do anything ever again?
Tom: She’s in a handful of episodes. Oh yeah, she keeps cropping up all the way through. And she wasn’t recast. One of the other fun things about it, as you watch episodes, is some quite surprising people—either at the beginning of their careers or people who are already quite well known—crop up. So Graeme Garden is in one episode.
Abigoliah: Oh, cool.
Tom: And Brenda Blethyn, who is an amazing actress who went on to a huge career in movies, is in one episode where she is trying to stop a chemical plant being installed. And part of the problem is that none of the people trying to make the decision understand chemistry.
Abigoliah: Yeah, that sounds like government. Exactly. Oh—the guy with the glasses, who I was like, who is that?
Tom: What is he?
Abigoliah: Yes—John—Littleton.
Tom: Nettleton.
Abigoliah: Nettleton. Yes. Okay—Nettleton—I—was he in a Fawlty Towers episode we watched?
Tom: I think so—no, he definitely was one of the ones we watched. He’s the kind of actor who might very well have been, but I don’t remember him being in any episode of Fawlty Towers.
Abigoliah: I—
Tom: —swear. But all these actors would kind of be passed around.
Abigoliah: Be in—
Tom: —and out. They’re all kind of part of the same pool. And there was always a part for an urbane, pompous-sounding British man in Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
Abigoliah: Listen—
Tom: He was the minister’s special adviser. So the difference there is that he’s not a member of government, and he’s a political appointee. In other words, he will be paid for out of party funds, not out of government funds. And that’s why the civil service is so suspicious of him, and basically thinks he’s not part of the machine.
Abigoliah: And that’s why they want to put him out—
Tom: Exactly, yeah.
Abigoliah: —in Watford or Walthamstow.
Tom: Walthamstow?
Abigoliah: Yes. I don’t want to be in Walthamstow. Yes. I kind of see why they might have written that character out, though, because you don’t need him. You don’t need him. Yeah, I’ve just seen one episode, but there is that thing of a new administration coming in and bringing their people. But because they have to please so many other people—and obviously we’re talking about Members of Parliament—that’s almost a different story. Like, are we talking about staff? Are we talking about the cabinet? Like, we’ve got to pick our story.
Tom: I think maybe they didn’t even realise what they had in, first of all, the characters of Hacker and Humphrey, and then also the actors. Because this is one of those wonderful things that happens in sitcoms—this kind of alchemy takes place over time. Even in the relatively short span of a British six- or seven-episode series, the actors start inhabiting the characters, the writers start noticing what the actors are doing and writing towards that, and this flywheel effect starts to take place where the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. And with these three actors—absolutely. And the guy playing Frank Weisel is fine, but he’s never going to be winning BAFTAs.
Abigoliah: Exactly. And I mentioned how great I think Nigel Hawthorne is—I loved his character. I will say, I think Paul Eddington was great. It’s so much fun to watch him as this character who has a real moral centre and core and wants to do good, but is so easily swayed. And there was such a small interaction where he was talking to one of the members—the Whip—and he’s like, about who’s trying to run against him. And just the small bit of theatre that wasn’t hugely picked up was when the Whip doesn’t know who he’s talking about and keeps trying to look at his paper. And it’s—so that’s a part that I think the audience didn’t laugh out hard at. This guy is just trying to—until he says, “Dudley.”
Tom: Yes—one of the seven Dudley sins.
Abigoliah: “One of the seven Dudley sins.” I want to know if they wrote that line and then made—
Tom: —the character Dudley. I’m pretty sure they did. Listen, those kind of happy accidents can happen—“oh, we called him Dudley, aren’t we brilliant?”—but it’s more likely it was written the other way around.
Abigoliah: Or did they call him, like, Frank through the entire episode, and then somehow they wrote the “seven deadly sins,” and then they’re like, we go back and—
Tom: No, that character’s in that one episode.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like—just when you write a script, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this—you’ll name a character like Frank and then you find a pun and you’re like, well, now I’m just renaming the character.
Tom: And the other thing I think it’s worth noting is that the relationship between Humphrey and Hacker is very similar, I think, to the relationship between Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. But I don’t know how well you know those P. G. Wodehouse stories that Ben Elton was so fond of. But similarly, Bertie Wooster would be trying to help a friend out or trying to get out of a problem himself, come up with a plan to do it. And Jeeves, his manservant, would urbanely disagree. Bertie would do it, it would be a disaster, then an even worse thing would happen which it would turn out was part of Jeeves’s plan to get him out of it. But Jeeves’s plans to get him out of his scrapes always seem to involve maximum humiliation for Bertie.
Abigoliah: Okay.
Tom: Similarly, the interplay between Humphrey and Hacker is—Humphrey always has the minister’s best interests at heart, but can never share his plans with the minister, because he will seem to be acting against the minister’s intentions.
Abigoliah: He definitely doesn’t seem to trust the minister’s ideas. Like, he is the minister. Like, you know when it’s like—
Tom: There’s even an episode where Hacker confronts him and says, “You have to understand, I run this department,” and Humphrey says, “No, you don’t. I do.”
Abigoliah: Oh, how did that line go down? I mean, in character—was he like, “you’re right,” or was he shocked that he said it out loud? He said the quiet part out loud.
Tom: Say the quiet part out loud.
Abigoliah: Yeah, yeah. I would say, because you brought up Ben, one thing that struck me in the first episode is, like, he gets to his office—“congratulations, have a sherry.” All I can think about is when Ben Elton went to meet Tony Blair. Do you remember this from the book? He talks about being summoned to Downing Street to meet Tony Blair, and it was in the evening—he was like, 6:00—and he didn’t know why. And Tony Blair was like, “Would you like something to drink?” And Ben was like, “I’ll take a beer.” And then he was there for 40 minutes and he’s like, “I think they had to send out for it. I think I was supposed to say coffee.” And then he was like, “I never got to—I don’t know why I was there. I think I failed the interview.” And I love that. But in the 80s you just walk in and have a sherry right away.
Abigoliah: The writing is great, and especially when all the ministers are around the table, I did feel like I was watching 12 Angry Men—like I’m watching a play.
Tom: Oh, I should say—there’s quite—in the first series of Yes, Prime Minister, I think it is—there’s another special adviser who’s much more interesting, and she is a woman, and she takes Sir Humphrey on. And probably the best episode of Yes, Prime Minister—but it doesn’t quite work if you don’t know the characters—is the episode called The Key, where she points out that Humphrey can just barrel into the Cabinet Office whenever he likes, and so they arrange to take his key away.
Abigoliah: Oh—I like that.
Tom: In Yes, Minister, it is the case six episodes out of every seven that whatever plan Hacker comes up with, Humphrey finds a way of blocking it. But in Yes, Prime Minister, they’re more evenly matched. So like in this one, Humphrey’s plan works beautifully—he’s able to throw the Employment Secretary under the bus and the plan is dead. But then at the last minute, Hacker realises now that the Employment Secretary has actually resigned, he can put the plan back on the agenda again. So Humphrey has just got back to where he started. And so they’re—firstly, they’re much more allies in Yes, Prime Minister, but also secondly, it’s much more evenly matched.
Abigoliah: Which makes sense as far as character development, because Hacker would be—
Tom: He knows the Whitehall machine.
Abigoliah: Yeah, he knows how it all works. Whereas in the episode one that we watched, he’s learning, and that’s why he’s misstepping. And again, because in that first episode I was like, wait, is Humphrey sandbagging him? Is he trying to get him fired? But it’s like, no.
Tom: At the end, he says, “I didn’t release the speech, and I knew how to do it through the channel—the error is mine.”
Abigoliah: “The error is mine.” He fell on his sword. Poor dear. I definitely—this is one that I deeply want to watch again. And as I was watching it this time—and I think because you mentioned how dense the writing was and how they steered away from a more slapstick form—like you look at Fawlty Towers, the writing in that is perfect and it’s slapstick—watching this just made me so sad in the way of like, they don’t make them like this anymore. And you know why? No one trusts the audience. And you know, we have second-screen viewing and we have this and we have that. And it’s not that funny things aren’t being made—again, Dinosaur, check it out, it’s amazing—but this, I just don’t know if you took a script this dense to a production company, if they would believe you that it could be a television show.
Tom: In 1977, they barely got away with it.
Abigoliah: Yeah.
Tom: And it’s this perfect casting that takes those very, very dense scripts—which are brilliantly written but need not have worked in the way they did—and just sends them to the moon.
Abigoliah: Well, it’s the bouncing back and forth and the lightness that Eddington and Hawthorne have, because Hawthorne could have played it way more conniving. Eddington could have been way more shouty. These are acting choices they could have made within the character. Like, I was like, oh, is Eddington going to be like a Boris Johnson, a bit of a bloviating “well, I know enough”? And he’s not. He has what he believes, but he handles it all so gently. And that’s what makes—then you can lean in and listen to the words, because you’re not listening to two men shout at each other. And another actor—I would be an actor who’d make that choice—I’d be like, I’m shouty, because that’s how you do comedy. Comedy is shouty.
Tom: Shall I tell you the rest of the story?
Abigoliah: Please do.
Tom: So there weren’t any catchphrases, but references to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were frequent. Even in the House of Commons, people would say, “that’s like something Sir Humphrey would say.” And also it sold surprisingly well overseas. People liked this caricature—literal caricature, given the opening titles—of the way that the British chose to organise their government. It was always being repeated. Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn rewrote the scripts as prose and published them as a pair of books, and it won the BAFTA for Best Comedy Series in 1980 and 1981 and 1982, and Nigel Hawthorne won four BAFTAs for playing Sir Humphrey—beating Paul Eddington all four times.
Abigoliah: Oh, what is their friendship like?
Tom: Well—
Abigoliah: Oh—oh. Tom made the story. Tom made the noise.
Tom: We’ll get to that in just a second. First of all, Antony Jay went back to working for Video Arts, but Jonathan Lynn continued his creative career. He wrote and directed movies including Nuns on the Run in 1990—
Abigoliah: I love My Cousin Vinny. It’s good, isn’t it?
Tom: Yeah—and My Cousin Vinny in 1992, and some other less successful films into the 2000s. Nigel Hawthorne continued acting on stage and screen. He is the star of Alan Bennett’s play The Madness of King George, and reprised the role for the movie version, winning an Olivier, a BAFTA and getting nominated for an Oscar.
Abigoliah: Wait, who did you say?
Tom: Nigel Hawthorne.
Abigoliah: Nigel Hawthorne, of course.
Tom: He died in 2001 of pancreatic cancer. Paul Eddington was already sick when he was making the last few series of Yes, Prime Minister. He died of skin cancer in ’95, leaving only Derek Fowlds alive to see Yes, Prime Minister resurrected on stage in 2010.
Abigoliah: How’d that go down?
Tom: Well, it feels like it could work, but then again—the casting. You see, it’s all about the cast. So it ran at Chichester with a very good cast—three fine actors. David Haig was Jim Hacker, Henry Goodman was Humphrey Appleby, and Jonathan Slinger was Bernard Woolley. The plotline was a bit unsavoury. It was the same two writers, but this time the Prime Minister had to procure underage girls in order to placate a visiting dignitary from a foreign power.
Abigoliah: Okay, so basically this was written—when, 2010? So Jonathan Lynn already knew about the Epstein files. This is clearly—he’s like, I know what this is based on.
Tom: Yeah. The reviews weren’t great, but it did transfer to the West End. And then that same script was expanded into a six-part series—not on the BBC, which Jonathan Lynn is very angry about—but on the satellite station Gold in 2013. Reviews for the revived series were even worse than for the play. Antony Jay died in 2016, but Jonathan Lynn, who was 13 years younger, is still going and is still reviving Yes, Minister—I’m sorry, Yes, Prime Minister—starring Griff Rhys Jones and Clive Francis, opened at the Apollo Theatre in January 2026 before going on tour. Reviews were lukewarm, but noticeably better than that play that transferred from Chichester, and it does seem to be selling very well. It’s just had its run extended.
Abigoliah: Good. Good for him.
Tom: Maybe we should go and see it.
Abigoliah: I would love that. Also, sometimes I wonder—like when we had David Tennant on and he was talking about if you were to play Reginald Perrin, you’d just want to do Leonard Rossiter, right? Now, Yes, Minister is 40 years old, so not that people don’t know who Hawthorne and Eddington are—because this always comes up in our comments and people are always asking us to do this show, so people know them—but enough time has passed that a new person can be a different version of the character.
Tom: Well, we’ll pick that up, I think, in our Patreon discussion. But for now, I think it’s time that we turn to the Shelf of Fame. And as we always knew it would, we’ve come to the point where we have a full Shelf of Fame. We’ve already pushed, I think, The Good Life off the bottom, even though it earned a place on there briefly. So once again, putting this on the Shelf of Fame—which I sense you want to do—is going to mean evicting something else. So where do you think it goes, first of all?
Abigoliah: So I’m going to do that thing where I start to switch stuff up, because I’m not ready to say goodbye to The Young Ones yet. And I’ve watched most of The Young Ones. I only watched the two episodes of The Office, so we’re going to switch them. The Young Ones is going to stay at number ten, and we are going to put Yes, Minister at number two.
Tom: Oh wow.
Abigoliah: Kicking off The Office. So that means our Shelf of Fame is now Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV—good luck knocking her off, it ain’t gonna happen—then Yes, Minister, then The Day Today, Not Only… But Also, Absolutely Fabulous at number five, number six I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, seven Fawlty Towers, eight The Vicar of Dibley, nine Morecambe and Wise, and ten The Young Ones. Okay—that’s what I’m doing now.
Tom: The Young Ones clinging on at number ten.
Abigoliah: I just—I can’t say no to it. And strangely enough, with The Young Ones, it opened me up to Alexei Sayle’s work. Of all the—like, Rik Mayall, I’m like, who cares—but now I’m like a real Alexei Sayle stan. And what’s so fun about watching these shows is finding these comedians and then going and seeing what else they’ve done. But I mean, Yes, Minister—it’s just good.
Tom: Yes, Minister.
Abigoliah: Yes, Minister. What do you—well, we know why I keep killing it—but Prime Minister’s Questions is a great comedy. I will die on that hill.
Tom: I’ll give you a fun fact about Prime Minister’s Questions, if you like.
Abigoliah: Go on.
Tom: So the system always used to be that any question that was put to a government minister needed to be given in writing. But then you were allowed to ask a follow-up question. So Prime Minister’s Questions had a usual form: you first asked the question, “What are the Prime Minister’s engagements for the day?” and the Prime Minister would reel off a few things that were going on. And then your follow-up question would be, “Given that, does the Prime Minister have time to consider my actual question?” And so for the second question, the Prime Minister would say, “I refer the Right Honourable Lady or Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.” And it was only when Tony Blair became Prime Minister—he looked at that and went, this is farcical. The point of Prime Minister’s Questions is that they can ask me anything, and that is what is happening. So why do we have to go through this ridiculous charade? And he scrapped it.
Abigoliah: Good for him.
Tom: Yeah.
Abigoliah: Good for him.
Tom: It’s one of those little bits of British nonsense that we kept around for decades.
Abigoliah: Well, someone I used to have a joke about watching Prime Minister’s Questions—about how, you know, the way they get all up in arms—and I just… and someone told me that the podium between the Prime Minister and the opposition are a specific distance apart. I can’t remember the exact distance, but it’s because at that distance two swords can’t touch. So they’re like two inches or three centimetres apart—far enough that they can’t run each other through or slash at each other. Oh—you told me. You told me how everyone died. But did Hawthorne and Eddington—do you know—did they get along?
Tom: Oh, I think they did. Yeah. Like I said, they had different approaches to the part, but you can’t be in that many episodes and be so dependent on the other person—as you said, it’s like a game of tennis. Volley, volley, serve—you can’t do that without becoming close. And I think they were quite close.
Abigoliah: I can see why maybe Hawthorne won the BAFTA and Eddington didn’t—not because Eddington wasn’t brilliant, but it’s that thing with award shows where Eddington is kind of the straight man, and he’s grounded and baffled, whereas Hawthorne gets to be devious and a bit more—
Tom: It’s terribly funny that the moment at the end of the Christmas special—which I won’t spoil for you—but it’s a little bit of a callback to that first scene in Hacker’s flat waiting for the call. The physical comedy he does there—which is not slapstick, but it is physical comedy—is remarkable.
Abigoliah: Oh, I believe it. I mean, it’s not that he’s not as funny as Hawthorne, because he is, but his character is more realistic, whereas I think Hawthorne’s is a bit—
Tom: Yeah. He is elevated Shakespeare. He’s—Iago.
Abigoliah: I know—and now I see it. Because whenever someone mentions comedy and Shakespeare, you always think Falstaff, you know—but the fact that he’s going for Iago, I was like, what is this? And now I understand. Now I totally understand. I highly recommend this. Is this on—this has got to be on iPlayer.
Tom: It’s on iPlayer at the moment.
Abigoliah: Great. Everything is there. So yeah, go and check it out.
Tom: Next time we’re going to be watching another absolute classic—Dad’s Army.
Abigoliah: Another one people have asked us to cover. It is happening. I’m so excited about it.
Tom: We’ll watch series two, episode four, which is called Sergeant Wilson’s Little Secret, and then we’ll watch series six, episode one, The Deadly Attachment. And I’ll say now—along with “Don’t mention the war” and “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”—another priceless comedy moment, a line of dialogue that means nothing taken out of context but which always comes up in clip shows, is in the second of the two episodes we’ll be watching. I’m interested to know if you can spot it, not knowing what it is before it comes up.
Abigoliah: I’m going to listen for it, because I got the Tony Hancock one—I was like, oh no, you had to tell me—and once you did… but I wasn’t listening for it. So I’m going to watch out for it this time. Guys, thank you so much for listening and watching, if you’re joining us on YouTube, to All British Comedy Explained. As always, several ways to support the podcast: please subscribe on your podcatcher app, subscribe on YouTube, watch us there if you can, rate and review us—it helps other people find the podcast—or simply share it with a friend. If you see a reel come up and you like it, send it to a friend—please do. I make the reels. I work so fucking hard at it. And of course we have our Patreon, and we’d love you to join us there. At the £5 tier we do our special mini episodes, and in this episode we will be covering—
Tom: Can you recast an iconic character?
Abigoliah: All right, we’re going to talk about that right now. And anything else to plug?
Tom: I don’t think so.
Abigoliah: All right, guys—until next time. Bye bye.
Tom: Cheerio.