yes minister – Dirty Feed

That Squalid Little Rag

Published 15th October 2023

On the 9th March 1981, BBC2 first broadcast the Yes Minister episode “The Death List”. It’s a particularly good episode for many reasons, not least Graeme Garden marching into the programme for one show-stealing scene, and turning it into The Goodies.

But that’s comedy, and we don’t deal with comedy around here. We deal with far more important things. Such as: which issue of Private Eye is Jim Hacker reading from here?

Is it a real issue of the magazine? Or is it a prop, made from scratch?

Let’s see what we can dig up. Our first point of call is, of course, Private Eye‘s covers library, which usefully gives us an image of every single cover since the magazine’s first issue. And to help narrow down the search, we also know that “The Death List” was recorded in studio on the 1st February 1981. Did they just grab the latest issue of the Eye and bung it in Paul Eddington’s hands?

Not quite. The above cover doesn’t appear in Private Eye‘s cover archive. But Issue 497, dated the 2nd January 1981 – just a month before the studio date – looks rather suspicious:

Private Eye cover with purple background

Private Eye issue held in episode, with purple cover

That purple background is very distinctive. Which gave me ideas. But there was only one way to know whether I was right. Luckily, the back page of the magazine is very prominent in the episode as well, with the obvious wording of CAMP AFRICA in the top left.

A quick eBay later, and I held a copy of Issue 497 in my sweaty, desperate hands. Was my gut feeling correct?

Actual issue of Private Eye, showing purple cover and CAMP AFRICA advert

Yes indeed. The prop department simply got a recent issue of Private Eye, stuck a new picture on the front over the old one, and job done. Lovely.¹

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The question is: why exactly did Yes Minister bother to change the picture? Is it because the original cover has TV-am stars on? Could they not get the rights? Or did the Beeb literally not want to advertise ITV?

It’ll be something like that, anyway. But I would suggest there’s another reason why it makes sense to have a mocked-up Private Eye cover. The world of Yes Minister isn’t quite our world. Sure, there are newspapers dotted around the series which have real-life headlines, but they aren’t usually plot-relevant props. As soon as something gets drawn into the story, it makes sense for the issue of Private Eye to not be a “real” one. Things are supposed to be slightly askew. ↩

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The Henderson Report

Published 8th October 2023

TV Comedy

On the 23rd December 1982, BBC2 broadcast the final episode of Series 3 of Yes Minister. Titled “The Middle Class Rip-off”, it’s an amusing satire on arts funding, and the nature of “high” culture and “low” culture.¹

SIR HUMPHREY: The point is, suppose other football clubs got into difficulties. And what about greyhound racing? Should dog tracks be subsidised as well as football clubs, for instance?
BERNARD: Well, why not, if that’s what the people want?
SIR HUMPHREY: Bernard, subsidy is for art. For culture. It is not to be given to what the people want. It is for what the people don’t want but ought to have! If they want something, they’ll pay for it themselves. No, we subsidise education, enlightenment, spiritual uplift. Not the vulgar pastimes of ordinary people.

You can probably guess which side Hacker is on.

HACKER: Why should the rest of the country subsidise the pleasures of the middle class few? Theatre, opera, ballet? Subsidising art in this country is nothing more than a middle class rip-off.
SIR HUMPHREY: Oh, minister! How can you say such a thing? Subsidy is about education. Preserving the pinnacles of our civilisation! Or hadn’t you noticed?
HACKER: Don’t patronise me Humphrey, I believe in education too. I’m a graduate of the London School of Economics, may I remind you.
SIR HUMPHREY: Well, I’m glad to learn that even the LSE is not totally opposed to education.

Very droll, Humphrey. Still, the rights and wrongs of funding for the arts isn’t our big interest today. Instead, I want to look at the Radio Times capsule for the episode. Which features something rather unusual.

Take a look at those names. Eddington, Hawthorne, Fowlds: check. And John Nettleton, John Barron, Patrick O’Connell, and Derek Benfield: check. But what about Joanna Henderson, playing the Curator? She’s not in the episode at all. Nor is she in the end credits. What gives?

To answer that, I have to take you on a little expedition. And to tell the tale properly, we have to go right back to 1979.

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For an alternative – and rather more negative – view of the episode, read Graham McCann’s A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister, a book which comes highly recommended. ↩

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Of Ministers and Mandarins

Published 5th October 2023

TV Comedy

Much as I love Jonathan Lynn’s Comedy Rules: From the Cambridge Footlights to Yes, Prime Minister, it seems that every time you poke it, another inaccuracy falls out. I’ve already talked about a certain set of Evening Standard reviews of Yes Minister. But that’s far from the only problem.

Let me quote that section of the book again.

“No one took much notice of the second episode, but everything changed after the third week. This sudden surge of enthusiasm was the result of a lengthy article by Roy Hattersley in the Spectator. Hattersley was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party at the time and, like Jim Prior in the Tory Party and Jim Hacker in our series, was a centrist politician who could have belonged to either party. Hattersley described everything that the show had shown so far, confirmed that this was exactly what had happened to him when he first became a minister, and asked how on earth did we know?

Hattersley’s article galvanised the political press. Suddenly political correspondents took up the show and editorials started to be written about it. The TV critics, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon, and after the fourth episode the critic from the Evening Standard told his readers that Yes Minister was an excellent comedy show and he had said so from the start. He hadn’t.”

As well as misrepresenting the Evening Standard reviews, commenters here were quick to notice other errors. David Boothroyd correctly points out that Hattersley only became Deputy Leader in 1983; it was Michael Foot in the role at the time of Yes Minister‘s first series. Worse, even the referenced article by Hattersley is incorrectly attributed: Simon Coward points out that there’s no evidence of such an article in The Spectator around this time.

Luckily, I have very good readers who do all my work for me. A bit more digging from Simon revealed that the article wasn’t in The Spectator at all; it was in The Listener instead. Silly similar syllable sounds. And then your friend – and indeed he’s my friend as well – John Williams kindly bunged me a copy of the whole article.

Titled “Of Ministers and Mandarins”, and published in the 20th March 1980 issue of the magazine, this was clearly written after the third episode of the series was broadcast: “The Economy Drive”, on the 10th March. It represents one of the very first serious pieces of analysis of Yes Minister – perhaps the very first – and so is an important document in our understanding of the initial reaction to the show.

It seems worth, therefore, replicating the article in full. Take it away, Roy Hattersley.

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Don’t Tell Me About the Press

Published 1st October 2023

TV Comedy

Jonathan Lynn’s Comedy Rules: From the Cambridge Footlights to Yes, Prime Minister is a slightly odd tome. Part autobiography, part an attempt to nail down the rules of comedy – while admitting that any such attempt is doomed to failure – it does feel like it would occasionally benefit from a little more focus. On the other hand, I found myself nodding along vigorously to pretty much every single page.

For instance, when talking about Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister:

“The series eventually ran from 1980 to 1988 but was not about the eighties. It was devised in the seventies and reflected the media-obsessed politics of the Wilson/Heath/Callaghan years, not the conviction politics of Margaret Thatcher. It was actually much closer to the politics of the years that followed, the years of Major, Blair and Brown. In any case, there is a timelessness about good comedy: the pleasure and excitement of recognition are not rooted in a particular time or place. Humanity remains constant.”

This dual nature of what comedy can be is key: it can be ostensibly linked to a particular time, and yet still leap easily across the years. I always shake my head in dismay when people tell me how easily comedy dates. Comedy is usually about people, and people don’t change either as much or as quickly as many would like to think.

SIR ARNOLD: What about the DHSS? John?
SIR JOHN: Well, I’m happy to say that women are well-represented near the top of the DHSS. After all, we have two of the four Deputy Secretaries currently at Whitehall. Not eligible for Permanent Secretary of course, because they’re Deputy Chief Medical Officers and I am not sure they’re really suitable… no, that’s unfair! Of course, women are 80% of our clerical staff and 99% of the typing grade, so we’re not doing too badly by them, are we?

— Yes Minister, “Equal Opportunities” (1982)

BARBIE: Are any women in charge?
MATTEL CEO: Listen. I know exactly where you’re going with this and I have to say I really resent it. We are a company literally made of women. We had a woman CEO in the 90s. And there was another one at… some other time. So that’s two right there. Women are the freaking foundation of this very long phallic building. We have gender neutral bathrooms up the wazoo. Every single one of these men love women. I’m the son of a mother. I’m the mother of a son. I’m the nephew of a woman aunt. Some of my best friends are Jewish.

— Barbie (2023)

Humanity remains constant indeed. Especially the terrible bits. Which is what an awful lot of comedy is about.

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Stand By, Studio

Published 20th September 2023

TV Comedy

Anyone up for yet more production fun with Yes Minister? Of course you are.

Take a look at the below scene from the Series 3 episode “The Challenge”, broadcast on the 18th November 1982. Hacker is in a TV studio for a BBC documentary about civil defence, about to be interviewed by Ludo. Sorry, Ludovic Kennedy.

Spot anything interesting about the above scene? Take a look at the very opening shot. If you look carefully at the top of the interview set, you can see that it’s just a couple of green walls placed in front of one of Yes Minister‘s “real” sets!

Which one? I highly suspect that it’s the dining room set – there is a glimpse of the odious framed wallpaper at the top:

The TV studio

The restaurant

Regardless of any peeping bits of set, it’s a great bit of production design by the wonderfully-named Andrée Welstead Hornby. With a couple of green flats, and judicious use of the side of Studio 6 at TV Centre, you have a completely convincing setup, for very little money indeed. Because TVC was used to make all kinds of programming, it was very easy to simulate all kinds of programming as well.

Sometimes, as with Python, it’s easier and more effective to do your satire from the inside.

This point extends beyond the sets. There’s one more bit of fun to be had with this scene. Let’s take a look at the production paperwork for the episode; buried deep within it is the following:

IN VISION STAFF

BRIAN JONES – Production Manager, Light Entertainment Comedy Tel.
ANDREW MOTT – Camera Operator, Technical Operations

The above two names aren’t actors. These are actual BBC staff, who appear in-vision during the interview sequence. And who must have worked on Yes Minister as the actual Production Manager and a Camera Operator respectively.

Sadly, the only camera-related credit in the end credits is Peter Ware as Senior Cameraman. But if we check the Production Manager credit:

End credits caption: Production Manager, Brian Jones

Much like the wall of TC6, why not use what you have already, for added verisimilitude?

Now come on someone, write a sitcom which involves a BBC Network Director in a bit part. I want my own little moment of glory.

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Rapped Knuckles All Round

Published 5th July 2022

TV Comedy

I don’t spend all my time trying to prove people wrong on here, you know. Sometimes there’s joy in being able to prove somebody right, too.

Take this little anecdote about Yes Minister in Paul Eddington’s autobiography:

“There were rapped knuckles all round on one occasion. We had finished the recording one night and were waiting for the tape to be checked before the audience could be released and we could all go home when someone doing the checking noticed a slight mistake in one of Nigel’s long speeches.

The poor man came back with it all to do again, took a deep breath and did it, perfectly. We got our clearance and shot off home. But what no one had noticed was that since Nigel recorded the speech the first time there had been intervening scenes with costume changes, and Nigel was wearing the wrong tie. It was a viewer who spotted the mistake when the episode was shown.

– So Far, So Good, Paul Eddington, p.168

Unfortunately, Eddington doesn’t go into such piddling little details such as which episode he’s actually talking about. We’ll have to do the work for ourselves. Or at least cheat by grumpily searching Google.

Sure enough, “yes minister” bloopers tie comes up with the following IMDB entry. Apparently, during the Series 1 episode “Big Brother” (TX: 17/3/80)¹, “Sir Humphrey’s tie changes several times during one scene with Jim Hacker.”

“Several times” is an exaggeration. In fact, it changes once, and then back again, as we can see in this clip:

Humphrey’s “Yes, quite so, Minister” is the funniest part of the whole episode.

Anyway, we can clearly see the tie change for Hawthorne’s mildly difficult speech, and then change back again, indicating the reshoot. From blue and burgundy, to burgundy with white spots:

Tie in original scene, blue and burgundy

Original shoot

Reshoot

And what’s more, the errant tie genuinely is the same one as that worn in the final scene, indicating the reshoot took place exactly as described by Eddington:

Reshoot

Final scene

And there you have it. Proof that Paul Eddington wasn’t talking bollocks. Why bother fact-checking actual ministers who run the country, when I can fact-check pretend ones instead?

In all seriousness, though: it really is just as pleasurable for an anecdote to slip neatly into place as fact, as it is to prove somebody wrong. Poking away at these things isn’t an exercise in self-importance. The truth about something, no matter how inconsequential, is always worth striving for.

Yes, I’m no fun at parties, what’s your point?

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Just out of interest, the episode was recorded on the 13th January 1980, a shade under two months before transmission. ↩

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What The Papers Say

Published 15th April 2021

TV Comedy

HACKER: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. And The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
HUMPHREY: Prime Minister, what about people who read The Sun?
BERNARD: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.

– Yes, Prime Minister, “A Conflict of Interest” (TX: 23/12/87)

The above is one of the most famous sequences in the whole of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. And like so much of the best comedy, it’s many things at once. A forthright piece of satire on the media, a character moment for Bernard… oh, and a rude joke into the bargain.

It was also, in some circles, a well-worn piece of material by the time it was broadcast on the 23rd December 1987. And the original version of that material was certainly not written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Not that any of this comes under the Official Secrets Act. It’s often been talked about on Twitter, people have asked about it on forums, and it’s also briefly discussed in Graham McCann’s excellent book, A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister. But nobody seems to have collated all the different strands of this little story together in one place.

So here is the tale of where this routine comes from… or, at least, as close as we can get. I can’t promise you that I have found the true origin of this material. But I believe I have managed to get further back than anybody ever has before. And if you already think you know definitively where this material comes from, then prepare to be surprised.

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Roughly 3,000 Words on Yes Minister Pilot Edits

Published 28th February 2021

TV Comedy

When discussing the origins of Yes Minister, one story seems to loom above all: a nervous BBC delaying the series until after the 1979 election. The following version of this tale, told by writer Jonathan Lynn, seems a good a place to start as any. On that pilot recording:

“That Sunday, we recorded the show. I had asserted, with a confidence I did not wholly feel, that it would get laughs. Neither of us¹ quite expected the gales of laughter which came from the studio audience that night. John Howard Davies lost little time in commissioning three more scripts, to make the first series of seven. Then we waited, and waited… and waited.

The Winter of Discontent approached and government all but broke down, and the BBC refused to transmit the first series until after the forthcoming election, which turned out to be not until 1979. They were scared that it would be seen as improperly influencing the election. Finally, three years after we had first proposed the show to the BBC, we went on the air in February 1980.”

Jonathan Lynn, “Comedy Rules”, p. 107

Perhaps Lynn can be accused of indulging of some spin of his own here. I’m willing to take him at his word that it was three years since he and Jay had proposed the series to the BBC, but that isn’t the real point when it comes to this particular delay. The heavy implication in the line about the election not being “until 1979” is surely that the pilot was made in 1978; otherwise, why not say “later that year”?

In fact, the pilot of Yes Minister was shot on… the 4th February 1979, a year before it was broadcast on the 25th February 1980. The election clearly caused a delay, but perhaps not for as long as Lynn indicates here.

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Lynn is referring to his co-writer Anthony Jay here. ↩

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Sitcom Recording Leaflets: New Yes, Prime Minister

Published 16th January 2013

TV Comedy

As regular readers of this site will know, I have lots of little obsessions – and one of the more obscure ones is the leaflets that used to be handed out to the audience at sitcom recordings. I’ve already detailed such little leaflets for episodes of The Brittas Empire and Every Silver Lining, but sadly these just doesn’t seem to be made any more – I have certainly never been given any since I started attending audience recordings in 1999.

Up until last year, that is. Imagine my delight when I went to see the first episode of the new Yes, Prime Minister series recorded, and a good old-fashioned leaflet was waiting on each audience member’s chair. Whether this was a holdover from the series’s roots as a stage production, or simply because Gareth Gwenlan and Jonathan Lynn like doing things the old way, it was a lovely little souvenir to take home to remember the recording.

Anyone care for a scan?

Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Cover

Yes Prime Minister Episode 1 leaflet - Inside

Lovely stuff. I wish every sitcom recording still did this. I’m still on the lookout for more of these, by the way – if you have any hidden away in drawers, why not hunt them out and scan them in?

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A Few Notes on the Recording of the First Episode of the New Series of Yes, Prime Minister

Published 23rd August 2012

TV Comedy

There is a pattern happening over at UKTV. Last year, they commissioned a new series of Red Dwarf – a show that the BBC had decided they didn’t want any more. This year, they commissioned a new series of Yes, Prime Minister for Gold, still written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn – and does anyone remember the stories about the BBC rejecting a proposed series Yes Commissioner a few years ago, based around the EU?

This week, I attended the first of six recordings for the new series. (They’re happening through September, so there’s plenty of chance to grab a ticket.) Interested in a little run-down, in lazy bullet-point form?

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