"In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen. Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it. In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
.....Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.”
I'm joined by 'my right honourable member' Gareth Allen from the British Sitcom History Podcast constituency to dissect the interminable obfuscations and myriad machinations of this early 1980s gem of political satire: 'Yes Minister'.
We hope you enjoy the podcast!
"In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen. Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it. In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
.....Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.”
I'm joined by 'my right honourable member' Gareth Allen from the British Sitcom History Podcast constituency to dissect the interminable obfuscations and myriad machinations of this early 1980s gem of political satire: 'Yes Minister'.
We hope you enjoy the podcast!
Well, Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis, it is probably true to say that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn't very much in it one way or other, as far as I can see at this stage. And that, of course, is a quotation from Yes Minister, which we're going to be talking about today. I'll give a quick intro for me and then my guests. So, I'm Harry White, host of the, Modern British Political History podcast. And for this one, I'm really excited to be joined by my right honourable member from the British sitcom podcast constituency, Gareth. Gareth, would you like to say hello and introduce yourself? Hello. Hello.
Gareth:Harry. Thank you for having me. Hello, everybody. yeah, I'm Gareth Allen. I am one of the presenters of the British sitcom history podcast. And, we thought there was room for a crossover here with a political sitcom.
Harry:Exactly. So, Gareth's going to be really helpful, uh, answering some questions from me on the sort of sitcom angle of Yes Minister and how does it actually function as, as a sitcom. but I will speak to a little bit more of the historical, political element, and as a civil servant myself, we'll be able to speak towards What is this in terms of a portrayal of the civil service, you know, particularly at the time that it was coming out in, which was early 80s, So we'll get a bit of both angles. So yeah, I'm very excited about this one. Gareth, how are you feeling for this one?
Gareth:I'm really excited on our show. We, we, obviously we talk about sitcoms. That's what we do, but we do try to place them in context of their time. And, we try to do a little bit of social history around the sitcoms as well. And so this is really ticking all of my boxes. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Harry:Fantastic. And I think that was one starting point I wanted to make with Yes, Minister is touch a little bit on the historical element of it and see what you think about it, Gareth to kick things off. So when I think of Yes, Minister, I immediately think of a quotation from Dominic Sandbrook, the historian who talked about Britain in the seventies. And he compared it to something that you'll know very well. He compared it to faulty towers. So he said Britain in the seventies. felt like this place where nothing ever quite worked the way it should do. Things were dysfunctional, it had seen better days, all of that stuff. And I think a lot of that kind of thinking filters into Yes. Minister, the, the kind of sense of what Britain was like at that time. The challenges that Britain had. what do you think in terms of how, how it feels in terms of its context of, of Yes minister.
Gareth:Well, I think the timing is fascinating because I'm 47. I remember Yes Minister and its successor, Yes Prime Minister, when I was a kid. But I think of it as how you just described as that sort of 1970s post war consensus, buttscalism type of era where, it's pre Thatcher. not true. Yes. Minister started in 1980. It started after Thatcher had been elected and it ran to 1982. And then it was revived as yes. Prime minister, which we're going to focus on. Yes. Minister today, but, but it is a show of the eighties, but it doesn't feel like it does it
Harry:It feels like a show of the 70s, but from my perspective, yeah, definitely. I suppose we should ask the initial question, which is how would you describe the show, Gareth, to someone who hasn't seen it at all?
Gareth:Well, Yes Minister is a supposed inside look at a government department. It's a, it's the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs, the DAA, which
Harry:Fantastic
Gareth:is this, it's gloriously meaningless, isn't it? And that's an interesting thing about Yes Minister. It, it, it mixes the civil service with the political. It, we, we see this interaction between government work and political pressure, a little bit of his personal life as well. but, but really it's not a political show. We don't know what party Jim Hacker represents. And it's irrelevant that the clash here is between Jim Hacker, who sort of. is our everyman politician representing us. And Sir Humphrey Appleby, who's the civil service apparatchik, who, in the context of this drama, is a delayer and an obstructor and an obfuscator and just tries to frustrate every, every, uh, every political progress that, that Jim tries to make.
Harry:if I was going to put a sort of label on Hacker, I was thinking about what you said. You're right. He is this kind of Blank space isn't here as a character in some ways, but if there was one, then it would be maybe the type of politician that Thatcher disliked strongly in the 70s, which was the
Gareth:He's a wet, isn't
Harry:wet, um, Compromising, consensus making, uh, which many will see very po see positives of, of that, but Thatcher saw strongly the negatives of that, of saying actually, this was, this is why Britain has been in perpetual decline since probably at the end of the Second World War, she might have said, because there has not been the oomph, the drive, the passion that is needed, uh, which, whatever you say about Thatcher, she certainly did, definitely brought, uh,
Gareth:Well, uh, apparently this was Margaret Thatcher's favorite television program,
Harry:Not surprising.
Gareth:not surprisingly, because I suspect that. I, you know, anecdotally, this was, this reflected a frustration that she felt, um, but I, I, I'm not sure that's a huge endorsement because Margaret Thatcher is not legendary for a sense of humor. Is she?
Harry:No, in fact, would often, completely miss the point of, of jokes, whether I don't know, deliberately or, or just accidentally. Yeah, she was quite famous for that. What, what in terms of predecessors, would you see for? Yes, Minister, I suppose it's quite unusual, isn't it? It's, it's perhaps not what you typically would think of as sitcom material, but do you see any, any predecessors, you know, this kind of landscape better than me, Gareth, any particular, particular genre of sitcoms that you put it into, or?
Gareth:I tell you what, Harry, it depends on how, how you define it. So let's, let's define it at face value, a political sitcom. There really weren't many of this. This was, this was pretty unique at the time. I was, I was thinking about this before we, before we spoke. And what I came up with was, more sketch comedy. So, there's that famous beyond the fringe where Peter Cook was impersonating Macmillan and it was scandalous at the time. And, the story is that Macmillan went to see it and was mortified by the whole thing. Um, and I thought about spitting image, spitting images, sort of around about this time, although not before, but really there was no sitcom. that was political. There've been plenty since, of course. When I say it depends how you define it, as I say, on, on, on face value, that's what this is. But actually, I think this is fundamentally an odd couple sitcom. You know, it's, it's a clash between Hacker, this naive idealistic, he, he, he's got principles, but they don't really stand up to any, uh, any bad weather. And then you've got Sir Humphrey as a man of order. He bridled at the suggestion he even had, uh, principles and it's, it's this odd couple. It's Steptoe and Soane. It's, it's Rodney and Delboy. It's you know, it, it, it, it, it's the, the politics is the situation, but the comedy comes from the characters.
Harry:And actually it reminds me a little bit of the odd couple in terms of you've got the person who is living in the house already Has their own routines their own way of doing things and then often in those kind of situations you have this sort of Uh, interloper coming into the house. Don't you I'm kind of thinking of peep show for example as one
Gareth:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great
Harry:Uh, who just mixes it all up, you know, totally and much to the chagrin of the, uh Of the, of the long standing resident, which, civil servants are that the clues in the title of permanent civil service. So there they are the ones running the machinery of government, throughout different different persuasions of government.
Gareth:Regular listeners to our sitcom will know that I, I have a habit of trying to crowbar Steptoe and so into pretty much every description, every of every sitcom we cover. But I, but I genuinely, I, I'm not telling, I'm not doing this as a joke. I genuinely do think, you know, you, you, you, you might think, uh, uh, a government department is an odd, uh, setting for a sitcom. Well, a rag and boneyard is an odd setting for a sitcom because it doesn't matter. The setting is not, not the point. The point is how the characters interact with each other.
Harry:Hmm. And How well do you think it works in terms of how, I have a take on this, but I'd like to hear yours as an outsider to the civil service, but also an insider on sitcoms. How well do you think it works in terms of setting and all the basic logistics? How well do you think the civil service lends itself to the world of a sitcom?
Gareth:Well, uh, on a technical basis, it lends itself very well because with a couple of exceptions, there are no outside broadcasts. It's just a couple of offices. It's a really easy set to build. And so it was probably fairly cheap to make, which is, which is great. The BBC will have loved that. It feels like an outsider looking in. It feels like you're being shown behind a curtain. I, you're a civil servant, Harry. I don't have a clue what goes on in these meetings, in these departments, in these conversations. And so whilst I understand this as a fictional portrayal, it is, it's still fascinating to see how these things might work, which, which again, you don't, you don't get that sense of. Uh, being a fly on the wall when you watch Only Fools and Horses, which is council fly in Beckham, you know, that, that doesn't feel like you're getting an inside view on something. So there, it does have that element to it, which, which adds an element of, intrigue,
Harry:And from an insider point of view, I think of the civil service as a place where language is key. So often you're communicating, so often you're trying to find the right form of words to persuade, to influence, to, find the balance between not causing some massive fracas, but trying to make your point. And that... really does quite lend itself to sitcoms, because often sitcoms are about language, aren't they? And playing with words and all of that does seem to work quite,
Gareth:I guess we should, we should, mention the writers at this point. So Anthony J and Jonathan Lynn wrote Yes Minister and Jonathan Lynn is, is the younger of the two. And he's very much comes from a comedy background. He was in Cambridge Footlights. He was a contemporary of the pythons and the goodies. And, you know, if you look at what his career was, it was writing and directing. TV comedy, film comedy, and that's kind of what he did. Anthony Jay, in contrast, a little older, but he was a BBC man originally, but he sort of turned against it in later years, and he went into public relations and worked for the Conservative Party, worked for Margaret Thatcher, essentially. He was a speechwriter for Geoffrey Howell. So you had that sort of political insider's view as well. I sensed that it was a bit of a howl of frustration for him. Yes, minister.
Harry:I get that sense. So with Anthony Jay, that he definitely has this idea of, um, what's called public choice theory about, well, you should see the government, not just as, um, altruistic people trying to deliver on principle, but you should see it as a series of it's a more cynical view But it's it's the one heat that I think influences. Yes, mister. You should see it as different self interested actors trying to Kind of get get one over on the other or trying to kind of get their own personal benefit And that's definitely the view of the civil service. We get in. This is is more of that
Gareth:Can I ask you more on that? Cause I'm really fascinated by that. So, so when you say people trying to push their own personal agenda, do you mean, do you mean politicians? Do you mean people within the service or is the theory that everyone has their own agenda?
Harry:The theory is that at any organization, the way, the best way to look at it is to reject what might be seen as a typical way of looking at an organization and particularly looking at governments beforehand, which would be, well, governments are going to be mainly motivated by principles, the ideology, and also by the voters who elected them. But it's, it takes that view and goes, actually, there's less about principle. And it's more about incentives and rational actors trying to maximize their own Benefit essentially within the system. So that might be for it to give to give a an example We're going to talk a bit about Why is it that civil servants might be more cautious and in this show that it shows so much caution doesn't it? and that might partly be that There's an argument that there's less to be gained by being bolder because there's so much to lose in terms of press blowback, you know massive fracas all of that and Sometimes that, for an individual working the system, can seem like a bigger problem than the potential benefits that might be gained by, you know, if you announce some radical, very big, bold manoeuvre. So you see that in Yes Minister, don't you, where Hacker wants to be quite bold, quite exciting, but then there's some reluctance within the civil service there's a sense of we've seen X happen before and that didn't work out very well. So, uh, so that's, I think often quite a big influence as well is, is, is the feeling that politicians come with the same or similar ideas, similar answers. That have been tried and not worked before and that civil service often see their role as the ones who have to sit to try and caution against taking those, those actions, but that can often lead to the frustration of, of politicians who want to enact whatever that they're trying to enact and don't want always to see, the hurdles around the corner,
Gareth:Yeah. I think that's an interesting perspective, and we obviously, the narrative of Yes Minister is we're kind of on Jim Hacker's side, he's, he's hapless, but he is banging his head up against this civil service wall. And the most extreme example we, I could give you here is there's a whole episode where there's a, there's a hospital that has no patients, but it's got a full administrative team. And it's, it's the most efficient hospital in the country. And they're all really proud of it, but it's not treating anyone. And it's this adherence to policy and procedure rather than actually, what are we trying to really do here? You know, now, obviously that's an, that's a caricature, but I'm. I'm, I hear what you're saying about these ministers who might come in with a bold, big idea. And it does need a steadying influence, that dynamic between ideology and the steadying hand of, of logistics and practical reality. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably necessary for our system to work.
Harry:the other, the other argument is around incentives that often there's not a huge amount of performance related incentives within the civil service and people have different ideas about this. So some, some would say, well, that's all well and good because you don't want it to be about just Performance pay you want it to be about making a difference civil servants should only be motivated by that. But then on the flip side, you would say, well, in private companies, the way people typically are motivated by is by performance related pay bonuses, all of that kind of thing. So. there's a good argument that many make that actually that under motivates the civil service to take risks to do the unexpected because. Failure will will have a consequence. It will have a big blow back in the press. Uh, you know, heads roll, uh, but actually success. There might not be as many incentives for success. There might not be as many rewards. There are examples of very well delivered. Government policies, but they're not often talked about as much as the the big failure So everyone will remember the poll tax But how many people remember the rollout of the minimum wage probably less how many people remember? The rollout of the smoking ban, which was actually done very smoothly and very effectively good take up but I and it also links a little bit about to the the press in the uk which tend to take a more If it bleeds, it leads kind of approach to the, to the news and tend to, tend to be quite interested in the catastrophic failure rather than the sort of, uh, well thought through moderate success. So there's a few different kind of incentives that all, all come into play when you ask that question about why does the civil service sometimes look overly cautious, you know, all of those, all those issues we see in Yes Minister. I was going to ask you about, uh, any particular sort of favorite elements, uh, that you, that you would, you would point to or favorite moments, maybe that we could, we could talk about.
Gareth:I like, I like the jousting. I like the, the joust that is personified by Jim and Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby. It's great writing. It's good writing because Hacker occasionally gets a win, if it was just every single episode. Basically the pattern is Hacker has a big idea, Sir Humphrey tries to squash it and there's usually a bit of manipulation going on. But, but occasionally Hacker gets one over on Sir Humphrey and that, that's great writing
Harry:And he gets better, doesn't he? Learns, he learns how to work the system. Yeah. Yeah.
Gareth:absolutely does. And yeah, there is definitely development of the characters as we go along. I think the episodes, just from a writing point of view, the episodes are really well constructed. You know, you get sort of seeds sown early on, and there's lots of moving parts, and then they come together, you know, there were, there were three series of seven or eight episodes and by the end it felt a little bit formulaic. But I, to be honest, Harry, I think that's just a symptom of watching 25 episodes in a week. You know, I think if you were watching over three years, you probably wouldn't quite feel that. So I don't want to be too critical of that. I'll tell you one thing I do like, one element I really like about, um, Yes, Minister, are the. I'm going to say the club scenes. So when Sir Humphrey is out of the office and he's, he's doing his networking, we see John Nettleton as Sir Arnold is, who's the permanent secretary of the civil service. and it feels like that's where the real business gets done. And I really enjoy those scenes. There's always this element of, of deviousness and machination. I really liked that part of the program.
Harry:And just on that one question you asked me before we started which was to do with how accurate, are some of these portrayals of the civil service and I suspect. Particularly, you know, in the 70s and 80s, the civil service was a much less diverse kind of place, particularly in terms of number of women that feature, like most organizations, you know, but also less civil servants from ethnic minority backgrounds, less of a representation of the country at large, more of a private school, educated. Focus, you know, which I think has has has changed, although it's not. It's still not probably where it should be because we've got a 3rd of civil servants. A private school educated compared to about 7 percent of the country at large, but. I think that idea of the gentleman's club probably was quite a big factor of how decisions were made, partly because it was mostly men operating in that environment, and probably they also had a lot of time to go away and have a drink, because they weren't, you had a different kind of, um, sexual politics where the expectation of men coming home and, uh, helping out in the house. Looking at reading the kids that bedtime story probably wasn't as much there so you could stay home and you could stay in the gentleman's club and have a whiskey and do the, as you say, do the real politicking
Gareth:Well, do you know what? There's a, while we're on the subject, there's a really good episode. Um, and I, you know, I'm not expecting your listeners to go away and watch all these episodes for his homework, but if they want to, uh, series three, episode one is called equal opportunities and hacker realizes that there's no female representation at senior level in the. Uh, civil service. And so we have this character who's a guest, uh, Eleanor Bronn in a guest role, who's a female civil servant. And the idea is that, uh, Jim wants to get her promoted as a symbol of this bold new world where women can actually work.
Harry:A radical notion.
Gareth:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so Humphrey tries and tries to scupper this. It's, it's all, it's all pretty unpleasant to be honest, but, but a very interesting snapshot of the time. But there's a lovely punchline to the episode where Hacker, Hacker wins this time and he manages to persuade Sir Humphrey that Eleanor Bronn's character can get this promotion, you know, but it's not her turn. But she turns it down. She's off to work in the city. She's off to work in the city and make a boatload of money. Which, which is welcome to 1983 minister. but she, she, she scolds Hacker for being just as patronizing as Sir Humphrey. You know, he's trying to pat her on the head and say, and off you go, there you go. There's a job for you. You're very good. And it's, it, it, I think it's really well written. That is really well observed.
Harry:I'm sure that kind of element of Women entering into the service and having quite a paternalistic, patronizing approach taken to them. I was, you know, obviously not there at the time, but feels like it, you know, it's very likely that that was the case often. Um, and she becomes a bit of a cipher for the woman, yeah, the female civil servants, like, having to enter into the industry. Yes.
Gareth:I was going to ask you how, uh, I think it's probably an unfair question to ask you directly. Is this realistic or was this realistic? How would you know? It was 1980 before you were born, but perhaps a question, a better question would be how have things changed since that, that kind of paternalistic gentlemen's club of the seventies and eighties. To me as an outsider, it feels to me like the civil service is a much more modern organization now, but I think with any large institution, be it a government department or a bank or the NHS, you have that inertia. Don't you?
Harry:Yes, I think a lot of the change is similar to the rest of the work world in the UK. There's certainly a lot more women in the civil service. If you look at the stats, the last I've seen, and people are really geeky on this sort of thing like me, the Institute for Government is a really good organization for these kind of stats, but you've got about, Roughly parity in terms of men, uh, to, to women, uh, female civil servants, it does, it interestingly will differ a bit by department I think the civil service tends to reflect what's going on in the rest of the country. What one one element where there's something maybe that a bit a bit different is that I think technical skill. Is more valued in the civil service than it used to be. So used to have in, in, in the same idea of the gentleman's club used to have this idea that the generalist is the consummate civil servant, the Renaissance man, the man who does a little bit of this, a little bit of that, that the great amateur, it's kind of a British stereotype as as, as well. Um, and expertise was almost frowned upon, almost seen as a bit, well that's a bit parochial to have very specific expertise.
Gareth:Well, Harry, there's a, there's a really good example of that, isn't there? In the, in the show, there's a, uh, a couple of episodes where Ian Lavender, who people will know from, he was Pike in dad's army. Um, Ian Lavender plays a junior civil servant who is an expert. And he's written this paper on it. It's. The idea is that he wants there to be defined failure parameters for projects. In other words, projects might fail rather than just being quietly forgotten. And this guy and his report are treated like radioactive waste by Sir Humphrey because they don't want that sort of expertise. And there's a, there's an absolute disaster for Sir Humphrey when this, this character accidentally gets to speak to the minister. I thought that was really funny. And, and again, I don't, well, well, Harry, it's interesting what you're saying, because I thought, well, that's obviously a caricature. That's, that's, that's not true. But you're saying maybe it was to some
Harry:There's, if you read, uh, good reports on this type of thing, that is something that consistently has come up about lack of technical, deep expertise, too much churn in the civil service is often seen as an issue, so people moving around from one department to another too quickly. I think the churn element, if you, if you spoke to the Institute for Government, they would say that is still a big issue. People move around too much, they don't get a kind of deep embedded knowledge of what they're working on. Thank you. The technical expertise, there has been some shifts. There's been a real emphasis in the civil service over recent decades on The idea of professions and that you learn particular, deeper expertise, whether it's in finance or HR or whatever it might be, um, so there is, there is, there are, there have been some shifts over recent decades, but I think the idea of the policy generalist hasn't quite, uh, died a death. I think it would be fair to say, and the idea of everyone just having humanities degrees, the classics degree,
Gareth:I'm sure, I'm sure Sir Humphrey could read the Odyssey
Harry:Sir Humphrey has a classics degree. Exactly. Um, that I, I don't doubt was true, particularly at the time that there were a lot of classics degrees from Balliol flying around. And, and there has been a shift in that, but actually the world of the civil service is still quite humanities degree focused.
Gareth:But there's an interesting intellectual snobbery within Yes Minister. Uh, we see actually, it's called Bailey College, uh, rather than Bailey Hall, which I suspect is for libel reasons. But, um, uh, we, we see quite a lot of that Sir Humphrey at his alma mater. And there are many, many, many disparaging references to Jim Hacker's degree from the London school of economics, which is regarded as, you know, not a place where gentlemen would go. Yeah, exactly. Uh, that sort of sets my chippiness alarms got off, you know? Um, but,
Harry:I was just going to say on humanities degrees as well. I think part of the reason why it was, uh, Historically, there's been so many civil servants with humanities degrees is because It the civil service lends itself to being good with words and writing long tracks So you're often trying to persuade ministers. You're often writing long reports But there is a definitely a good argument that there's been a lack of technical expertise and there has been some shifts. There's been efforts to get more STEM, subjects expertise into the civil service. And I think there's been, from my understanding, you know, moderate success there, but there's probably, probably still quite a ways, a ways to go. I, I would imagine on that front. what about some of your least favourite elements, Gareth, in Yes Minister?
Gareth:Well, as I say, I think some of my criticism of the show might be. Uh, based on the, the manner in which I watched it all back to back, but I found actually some of the, the Sir Humphrey monologues by the end, they were starting to grate with me a little bit. So you actually used, used something similar at the top of the show as a, as a, as a quote to kick us off. And it was, it was a perfect example of that obfuscatory. Uh, language that Sir Humphrey uses. And, and I think, you know, as the series progresses, the writers kind of leaned into that because it always gets a big laugh. And sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, you know, like if you watch the later episodes of Last of the Summer Wine, it's just three blokes in a bath rolling down a hill. You've got to, you know, you sort of lean into the, the, the, you play the hit, you know, but I think overall I like Sir Humphrey and I like his. His obstructionism, I like the joust, that is my favorite part of the show. But then when it's, when it's overdone a little bit, it feels, it feels a bit, uh, lumpy. The other thing, the other thing that we haven't even mentioned yet, which kind of sums up why I don't like it, is the third character in this odd couple drama, which is Bernard Woolley, who is, uh, Jim's private secretary, right? I've got that right? Private secretary. So he's this kind of, he's, he's body man, he's, he's assistant, he's the civil servant who he's closest to. And like, I understand within the civil service, I understand that role, but within the sitcom, I don't, I don't really know what he adds. It doesn't really work for me. There's a, there's a, he sort of acts as a bit of a halfway house between the two characters, but I don't know. Sometimes that's useful for moving on the narrative, but I don't know. I don't like him. Is he like the, uh, is he like the Uncle Albert
Harry:I wonder if he's the cipher almost for the audience in that often he will ask the sort of ignorant questions particularly, um, to Sir Humphrey, he'll say, well, isn't it right that, A politician should do X, Y, z should try and imple implement their manifesto and you'll get some incredibly cynical Yeah. Uh, a answer Incre incredibly Game of Thrones esque answer, uh, from Sir Humphrey
Gareth:No, I, I, I, yeah. It's not really criticism of Derek Foals the actor. It's, it, it's more the role. I'm not, I'm, I, I don't know. It doesn't really, it doesn't really, I think without him, you'd, you'd struggle. You do kind of need that person, but it, it, yeah, it just feels like it's, it's not neither one thing nor the other. But you have just mentioned, I know you've asked me my least favorites, but I feel like I do need to say, We've talked about Sir Humphrey a lot. Nigel Hawthorne, the actor who plays him, is wonderful. He is, he is by far the best actor in this production and that's a great example of where Bernard will ask him an impertinent question and his reactions, his incredulity, sometimes his anger, you know, it's, it's, it's really great acting. I think he, I think he's brilliant. I mean, he's, you know, obviously he's an Oscar nominated actor, isn't he? It's not, I don't think I'm, I don't think I'm cracking a code here. Nigel Hawthorne is a good actor.
Harry:And on the obfuscating monologues, in terms of how much does that reflect the civil service? I mean, civil servants often can use flowery language, definitely. I mean, like I said, there's, there's a pedigree of coming from humanities degrees, which often privilege using lots of, uh, quite complex, flowery, long, long terms. And I think some of that, that flows in. Um, and there's also, there are examples to the point where there's been articles published about. Complex or unnecessary terms to use if you're a civil servant, um, the kind of, the kind of jargon that really starts to rub people up the wrong way. And you know those kind of slightly strange idioms like, we'll run that idea up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it, those kind of things.
Gareth:hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also think there are sometimes institutional, um, terms of phrase and verbal tics. I've got a few friends who are in the legal profession and they all say, well, in my view, such and such, and I don't know anybody else who says in my view, it's just, but it seems to be something that lawyers say.
Harry:And with the flowery language, uh, obfuscating language as well, part of that comes from a civil servant's perspective is that, uh, there's a common idea that you should be very wary, if you're a civil servant, of ever saying no. To a minister or I disagree you should always be talking about the risks of taking policies the benefits But never never directly even if you are personally squeamish about the idea never directly saying no I disagree so that
Gareth:now I'm thinking of
Harry:to quite twisted kind of answers where you're you're you're sort of Turning in on yourself trying to find a way of expressing what you want to express
Gareth:I'm thinking of Sir Humphrey saying very brave minister,
Harry:Very brave. Or, or there's bold. And then I think isn't courageous. Uh,
Gareth:Yes,
Harry:think he says something to the effect of if, if, if you say it's bold, that might, uh, lose your seat. But if you say it's courageous, that might lose you the next general election.
Gareth:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good.
Harry:So, I was thinking about what, what bits I, uh, was less fond of, um, in, in this as well. I, I think I probably, I've probably already given, uh, a flavor of, of what some of it is, which is, there definitely is, and I think it comes from Anthony, Anthony Jay, that cynical perspective uh, there's a good quotation from him about yes, minister, where he said, uh, in yes, minister, we're showed almost everything that the government has to decide is a conflict between two lots of private interests that have the politicians and that have the civil servants trying to advance their own careers. And improve their own lives. And that's why Public Choice Economics, which explains why all this was going on, was at the root of almost every episode of Yes Minister So it's a very Game of Thrones esque, very game theory esque understanding of how institutions works, where principles don't play a huge role in it. It's much more Machiavellian than that. So it depends on what you think about that. It is very, it's a very cynical way of looking at it, and I, you wouldn't be surprised to know that I would argue that actually there is altruism and principle that comes into actors in the civil service. Of course, there is self interest. Of course, There's a Game of Thrones esque approach to things that can sometimes creep in, but there is also political convictions and altruism. Um, so it's almost, it comes two very different ways of viewing people, and how people operate, that flow into into how you might think about. Yes, Minister. What do you think about this, this stuff, Gareth? I'd be interested in your view on, on.
Gareth:Well, I mean, I've got no inside view. I know that this is not realistic, but I understand also that it is a caricature of what was realistic.
Harry:Yes.
Gareth:Um, You know, one would like to think that there is some altruism going on and that people who work within the civil service, it's a career, it's a job, it's a way of earning money, but you're working in the civil service, you know, you didn't go to work for a merchant bank. So there's an element there of trying to make the world better, trying to, you know, do something for your country, however you want to, however florid you want it to sound, you know, there is, there is an altruism, I think, inherent to it. I used to work for a bank and I think there is. There is some similarity in terms of the institutionalism, the, um, uh, the inertia and torpor of the institution and struggling to get things done. I recognize some of that, but I also, I don't think, and I speak from personal experience, I don't think you can work for a bank and honestly think you are, you know, you are advancing the cause of good within the world, which is why I don't work for a bank anymore.
Harry:There is, and you do hear positively with civil servants. And often when they're asked why are you doing this job, the answer, I want to make a difference does crop up quite a lot. Now, whether sometimes that gets watered down or, or gets crunched under the sort of realities sometimes of working in a, in a big, uh, machinery of government type setup. I think that. Um, yeah. Hmm. Hmm.
Gareth:But yeah, Harry, Harry, life is complicated. You know, you can have, you can have, as we see, Jim Hacker has principles, but sometimes they have to be compromised. And that is, that is the reality. You can have this great altruism, but sometimes you can be having a really crap day and just not do a very good job. You know, the world is not binary. The world is not simple.
Harry:And, and, and, you know, civil servants, like anyone else, will also be thinking about, paying their bills, we'll, we'll, we'll be thinking about how, how can they get the next promotion often those kind of things, which are perfectly, legitimate kind of, uh, rational things to, to, to think about as well. But,
Gareth:And that, that, that thing you mentioned before about how, uh, you know, there's a danger in opposing something because you're, you're exposing yourself to being wrong. And, and, you know, it's easier to just keep your head down and advance your career. That is not unique to the civil service. That is. That is human nature.
Harry:so we've talked a little bit about, uh, our favourite parts of the series and some bits that we're less fond of. What do you think about the legacy of Yes Minister? Do you see, uh, shows that have come after that you see as clear successors to Yes Minister?
Gareth:Well, look, I mean, the obvious comparison is the thick of it, isn't it? And I think it. It, it, it very much, so what we were saying before, yes, minister, although it's in the eighties, he's very much that pre Thatcher seventies political culture. Whereas the thick of it is very much post Blair, new labor PR type of politics. And it's a really. Fascinating comparison. Again, purely just looking at the fiction, the sitcoms, the difference between Sir Humphrey and Malcolm Tucker. I know they're not doing the same job, but the difference between the culture there, the difference between the characters, the difference between the world they inhabit is. night and day. It's completely different. Now, again, they're caricatures of reality, but I think it's probably fair to say that working in the civil service in the late 70s versus working in the civil service in the early 2000s would be a completely different environment, a completely different place to
Harry:my perspective, I think there would be big differences. I think the emphasis on the media handling the media that's always been a big part of the civil service, but with the rise of. 24 7 media, uh, online as well. There has been a bigger emphasis on how do you keep control of the story at all times and how do you not lose track and, and having special advisors come in who are particularly dedicated or maybe even just solely dedicated to the media handling, that to me has had a big rise. And it's something that under Blair was That was recognized that there was a bigger emphasis on, on controlling the press. You had people like Alistair Campbell.
Gareth:Yeah. I'm old enough to remember Bernard Ingram. It was, it was Margaret Thatcher's Alistair Campbell. And you know, he was, he was seen as a bit of a bulldog at the time as well.
Harry:In a more subtle way, I think that's that's the interesting thing. Alastair Campbell was very, public about his, uh, operations, whereas, Bernie was famous for being much more subtle. Uh, so that, so there's interesting thing about how perception plays a role in all these, in
Gareth:Yeah. Well, okay. So I was going to challenge you there, Harry, but But perception is a better word, I think, because I think perhaps Bernard Ingham did pretty much, well, I'm, I'm guessing here. Bernard Ingham was pretty much the same sort of character and probably did the same things, but they weren't reported in quite the same way. We didn't have quite such an open culture. You couldn't see the machine whirring in the background, you know.
Harry:Hmm. I think that's right.
Gareth:There was a, there was one of the, you asked me about the legacy. There was one other sitcom, uh, which, which we've mentioned on our program before, which was a, a sitcom called no place for a lady. And this plays into our, um, our discussion earlier about equal opportunities. So this was a 1992 sitcom starring Penelope Keith. And she was a, she was a labor MP. And as the title of the sitcom implies that The comedy stemmed from this, Oh, she's a woman, she's an MP and she's a woman. You know, uh, this was five years before, I'm going to use the expression Blair's babes in 1997. Um, and so, and so, you know, it's not, it's not the only Westminster set sitcom. there were other examples, but there aren't many. There really aren't that many.
Harry:The only other one that came to mind, It was House of Cards, which is which is more a serious drama. But the idea of the Machiavellian.
Gareth:Are you talking about the British, the British
Harry:talking about the British version. Yeah, the kind of Machiavellian operating. Some of that reminds me of Yes Minister. Yes Minister's done in a caricatured, comedic way, whereas House of Cards is done in a much more serious way. But I don't know about the timings of those two in terms of which, which came out first.
Gareth:Well, yeah, that's an interesting question. It's outside my remit, it's not a sitcom, but I do remember it because, uh, I, yeah, I would think that was to be a bit later. I would guess late
Harry:It's 1990.
Gareth:it starred, it starred Ian Richardson. It was, was it David Nobbs who wrote that, the book? Um, well, anyway, it's Dardian Richardson as Francis Urquhart. And, you know, if you've heard of House of Cards and you're thinking Netflix, it was remade in America many years later, but yeah, it was basically about Francis Urquhart was a politician and he used skullduggery and literal murder to get to the top. And it was, it was, it was so Machiavellian. It was really, it was a really great drama.
Harry:I've talked about Game of Thrones a lot, um, but Game of Thrones feels like, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't draw a direct line to Yes Minister necessarily. But it does feel like it's in a similar category of interested in. Kind of the operations of government, and you've got characters like Littlefinger and Varys who are, the permanent civil service of the Game of Thrones world. They run the, the small, the small council, and they are, they have their own. Interests and maybe have a virus who is coming at it more from the good of the realm altruism. And then you've got a little finger who's probably more in the Antony J perspective of saying, well, I don't mind about the realm. I just mind about whether or not I'm I'm going to sit on the iron throne at the end of it. So these themes just play out. Don't they even even to even to today. So what about, it strikes me that people often base their understanding of what politics and politicians are like, and we've touched, touched on this a little bit on shows like this, probably more so often than they do on books or watching House of Commons debates or other, other things like that. What, what do you think about that? Is that for better, for worse, in terms of the public's understanding
Gareth:Well,
Harry:things?
Gareth:the better off worse. Well, I tell you what, before I try and answer that, I completely agree with the premise of your question. I think that, you know, I I'm a relatively politically engaged person. but And the thick of it is how I think of the Blair era, you know, that did that. And I, I did watch House of Commons debates. You know, I, I was that nerd. I think for better or for worse, it's true. People think Alistair Campbell and Malcolm Tucker are the same thing.
Harry:the counter argument is that it can then tend to over cynicism where all politicians are, uh, XYZ, um, and you have a, you have a very kind of end of deference approach to politicians.
Gareth:Well, you asked, you asked, is it for better or for worse? I don't really answer that question. I think it's, I think it's for worse, but I don't know what the alternative is because you are not going to get everybody watching, the debate on, you're not going to get everybody watching education questions. You know, it's just not going to happen. So if we want people to engage with politics, then it has to be made more accessible and the very act of. Editing, making things more accessible is a choice, isn't it? It's a, it's an editorial choice. And, you know, we're talking about sitcoms here, but it's how the news present, what the news reports, it's, it's the world we live in. I think it's, it is probably for worse, but there is really no alternative
Harry:maybe it's for better in terms of entertainment, it certainly is good for sitcoms, but possibly for worse in terms of politics, which, and those two things might always sit in different boxes.
Gareth:Yeah. Yeah.
Harry:So to wrap things up a bit, are there any kind of particular moments or great quotes that you want you want to point people towards or even episodes if people were going to get a kind of give this a go watching. Yes, Minister.
Gareth:I mentioned the, uh, series three episode one, which is the equal opportunities one. That's a really interesting one. The, the, uh, Series two, episode one is called the compassionate society, and that's the one where they have the hospital, which is, is open and the most efficient hospital in the country, but doesn't actually have any patients it's kind of, uh, the whole, the whole point of yes, minister reduced to absurdity. So I think that's a really good episode to kind of see how, how it all boils down.
Harry:the other one that came to my mind was There's one called open government. It might even be one of the first ones, which is a classic civil servant question is open government. In many ways, uh, CAMP could be really positive, but then has, has the challenges, if you're in government, that it means if you float an idea as a, as a suggestion, then it could be in the tabloids the next day as a kind of government is going to do X, Y, Z, you know, uh, all of that kind of thing.
Gareth:That's something you read about a lot as a, as a news consumer, you read about now civil servant, well, not civil servants, but politicians, perhaps civil servants as well, using things like WhatsApp to communicate rather than official minutes and emails, because exactly that not because there's anything devious going on, but they just want every moment of their thought process to be exposed in five years time, which I kind of get that. I understand that.
Harry:Yeah, it can be hard. It can be hard to do the sort of initial brainstorming of putting lots of ideas on the table if you know that your, your suggestion that was just a bit of blue sky thinking is going to become, uh, you know, splashed on on the headlines the next day.
Gareth:Mm hmm. Mm
Harry:It's why, you talked about Tony Blair, it's why Tony Blair famously regretted the Freedom of Information Act. He says he wished he'd never done that for, I think, those kind of reasons. Uh, little clips, if people want to do even small clips, because there are a lot of clips that go around about Yes Minister. There's one about the papers,
Gareth:I think that might be our closer.
Harry:tits. Yeah, maybe finish on that. Well, thanks, uh, for joining me on this one, Gareth. It's been great having a sitcom perspective
Gareth:I've really enjoyed it. How it's been. It's been, well, it's been interesting to get your perspective on the sitcom as well. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
Harry:and thanks everyone for listening and we'll put information in the show notes as well, links to things I'm sure. thanks everyone for listening to this one.