A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  The consequence was, he said, that the relationship between him and Eddington would be ‘very friendly’ without them ever becoming ‘great friends’.25 There was, however, a little more to it than that.

  Hawthorne was also unsure, and would remain unsure, of whether the great respect and admiration that he always felt for his co-star was ever fully reciprocated. ‘I used to get the feeling,’ he later confessed, ‘that he never thought that either Derek or I were quite up to it. I’m not suggesting that he thought he was better, just that his support could have been more classy.’26

  Such insecurities tended to be assuaged by the consistently sunny disposition of Derek Fowlds, who could always be relied on to keep the rehearsal periods bright and cheerful, although, according to Hawthorne, Eddington also ‘disapproved of Derek’s light-hearted approach, particularly where his work was concerned’, in spite of the fact that ‘as a pair they got on extremely well’.27 Such differences, however, remained, in a typically English way, unacknowledged and unexamined throughout the sitcom’s run, and certainly never threatened to undermine the general feeling of positivity within the team.

  ‘I didn’t even know that Nigel felt like that,’ Derek Fowlds would later remark. ‘He hid it very well. I certainly can’t agree with him about Paul. I always felt that we all got on brilliantly, and I loved them both dearly. It was just a joy to be with the two of them and watch them work together. Paul used to say to me, “This must be a masterclass for you, isn’t it?” I’d say, “What are you talking about?” He’d say, “Well, you know, standing between Nigel and me every week – it must be wonderful for you!” There was that kind of banter between us, and we had an awful lot of fun.’28 When all three of the main actors returned to work on the second series, therefore, they did so firmly looking forward to reigniting their on-screen rapport.

  There was no danger, though, of the team just settling for more of the same. Sydney Lotterby, the producer/director, came back determined to see the show reach new heights.

  Speaking to a journalist shortly before work on the sitcom was due to resume, he sounded a note of keen ambition tinged with a healthy degree of humility, stressing how important it was that the series continued to strive for accuracy and realism, not just in its coverage of the political system but also in its portrayal of the main characters. Hacker, especially, needed to be prevented from lapsing into caricature by now being shown to have grown during his time in office.

  ‘We have to get rid of the gaucheness of the Minister,’ Lotterby said. ‘The process has begun already and the authors have their finger on that – and then we must see the real expertise of the man. He is an expert in politics and we have to see how he becomes a bigger power. I don’t mean becoming Prime Minister, but how he gets total control – or doesn’t.’29

  The two writers themselves, while agreeing with Lotterby about the characters, also wanted to explore broader political themes. Both men, for different reasons and to different degrees, now wanted to engage with many of the issues that were being amplified by Margaret Thatcher’s Government.

  Jay, in particular, had come to feel an elective affinity with the outlook that was being termed ‘Thatcherism’, and was by this time an active supporter: ‘I started advising the Conservatives in 1977,’ he would later confirm, ‘and went on right through the 1980s.’30 He had already gone on the same kind of ideological journey as Thatcher, taking in Friedrich Hayek’s economic scepticism (with its stress on the complexity and inherent unpredictability of markets, and its doubt that policymakers could master these complexities well enough to guide the economy in the right direction),31 moving on to Milton Friedman’s economic libertarianism (a brand of neoclassical liberalism – favouring free trade, open markets, privatisation, deregulation and the reduction in the size of the public sector – which Jay had recently helped popularise in Britain via Friedman’s Video Arts-produced television series, Free to Choose 32), and then assimilating James Buchanan’s version of public choice theory (an approach which viewed government decisions mainly through the vested interests of the bureaucrats and elected leaders who make them).33

  The product of this blend of theories was an outlook that, to put it in simple terms, made one an enemy of bureaucratic meddling in politics, political meddling in the economy and moral meddling in society. It also made Jay’s perspective on the second series of Yes Minister – in stark contrast to a first series that had been created during an era still characterised by the post-war consensus – very much in touch with the zeitgeist of British politics.

  ‘I was very much an approver,’ Jay would say, ‘not of the Conservative Party, but of Margaret Thatcher, who was probably more of a Free Trade Liberal in the nineteenth-century mould than a twentieth-century Macmillan/Heath type of Conservative. If a large part of the audience had come to feel after watching the programmes that letting government intervene, interfere, and take over more aspects of life was not the best way to solve the nation’s problems, and that the contraction of government activities was probably more desirable than an expansion, then I, personally, would have been very happy.’34

  The left-leaning Jonathan Lynn, however, was relatively sceptical about this new ideological era, but he, too, could see some points of connection. ‘Between 1977, when we wrote the pilot, and 1979, when we started filming the first episode, unless you were a Marxist you knew that everything had to change,’ he would reflect. The first series, as a consequence, ‘was definitely critical of the way that the country was governed under the later years of Wilson and Callaghan. We both were opponents of the kind of Marxism that was then current.’35

  Unlike Jay, however, he never approached the second series, or any of the subsequent ones, with any intention of popularising some of the concerns, let alone complementing any of the convictions, associated with Thatcherism. As far as he saw it, they were producing a comical critique of the system as a whole, rather than a particular part of it, and there was certainly still a strong belief that the Government of the moment was just as deserving a satirical target as the previous one had been.

  Nonetheless, there remained a few aspects of their fictional political world that needed updating to make it match the facts of the early 1980s. Both Jay and Lynn had come to the conclusion, for example, that the character of Hacker’s special adviser, Frank Weisel, was now too redolent of an earlier era.

  The inexhaustibly eristic Weisel had been inspired by the kind of arm-patched, red-tied, union-friendly types who had flitted around the senior Labour figures of the 1970s, and thus no longer seemed to belong, in terms either of temperament or style, to the way that the new Conservative Government was operating. Rather than serving primarily as each Minister’s personal ally against the civil servants, special advisers were now starting to be seen more as a mechanism for providing the Prime Minister with expert independent input to counter her own departmental Ministers. Wanting to seem more ‘current’, but wary of mirroring this new trend too obviously and thus inviting the suspicion that they were commenting on a particular Government, Jay and Lynn elected to do away with the special adviser completely and leave Hacker to take on Sir Humphrey alone.

  There were a few more instances of fine-tuning before the scripts for the second series were ready. The impact of the media on politics and politicians, for example, was clearly growing more pervasive and intense (not only in terms of content but also, as Margaret Thatcher’s own continuing vocal and sartorial transformation underlined, in terms of form, too), and so image would be made even more of an issue in the show this time around.

  There was also the phenomenon of the new departmental select committees to consider. Set up in 1979, these cross-party groups now scrutinised, among other things, the policy and performance of each Whitehall department, and thus represented another potential challenge for both Hacker and Sir Humphrey to face.

  Jay and Lynn would make sure that they were fully up to speed on these and countless other developments by spending aro
und three weeks having lunches and meetings with various new, anonymous sources, followed by more in-depth sessions with Marcia Falkender and Bernard Donoughue (Nelson Polsby, by this time, was back teaching in the US). ‘We’d meet fairly regularly before each series,’ Donoughue would recall of his own sessions, ‘mainly in a fish restaurant in the City, and we’d discuss themes and ideas. I would tell them about my experiences. They would let me ramble on. And then, every so often, one of them – especially Jonathan – would say: “That’s the story!”’36

  After sketching out some basic plots, they would seek out specific experts in each subject, talk to journalists who had covered such areas and issues in the past, and also work their way through relevant cuttings libraries and archives. Only then, when they really felt they understood a topic inside and out, and could link it intimately to real life, would they retire to write the script.

  Piece by piece, Jay and Lynn wove the new elements in with the old, the fresh facts with the familiar fiction, and worked hard to keep the focus firmly on the broadest theme – beyond parties, beyond personalities, beyond topicalities – of the business of how government is actually conducted. There would be some new scenes, and some novel plots, but the basic story would be the same, and the basic story was going to continue.

  The writers could barely wait to push on, but, as was always the case, they were not prepared to cut corners when it came to preparation. Everything had to be just right, every detail had to be in place, before they would pick up a notepad and pen.

  Even when something was finally written, their drive for perfection was rarely at rest. Bernard Donoughue would recall how they always returned to him for one final expert critique:

  They would send me the scripts, particularly to try and make sure that nothing was in any way inaccurate or just plain wrong. They knew what they presented had to be authentic; it always had to ring true. So if top civil servants were watching it they would respect it. So I would go through the scripts and say things like, ‘Well, look, that room isn’t there in relation to that’, or ‘He wouldn’t say that’, or ‘That isn’t how it would happen’. It was that kind of advice. Then we would meet up again, and I would go through it all, explaining how to correct certain things. But normally they knew what they were doing. They were brilliant people.37

  The complete set of scripts for this second series, like all the later ones, was written well in advance of the first recording session (in this case during the late summer and early autumn of 1980). About six weeks prior to production, they met up with Sydney Lotterby and all of the principal members of the cast for a read-through of all seven episodes over the course of two consecutive days. At the read-through there was an opportunity for the actors to suggest any changes or clarifications, and for any other improvements to be considered.

  Once the rehearsal period began, the words in the scripts were treated as if they were set in stone. As well as being insisted on by the writers, this was welcomed by the actors, too.

  Nigel Hawthorne, especially, was adamant that, in spite of the long and elaborate speeches he always had to deliver, he would never resort to an autocue or cribs, so he made the writers promise never to change a single line within three weeks of the actors starting work on any episode. Employing a mnemonic system that associated a series of key phrases with a sequence of images, he needed to study great blocks of text and commit everything to memory as quickly as possible. Paul Eddington, in contrast, was more pragmatic, and was always happy to hide numerous crib sheets inside Hacker’s various official papers, but he, too, wanted to know that he could rely on every page remaining the same.

  Derek Fowlds, meanwhile, was often left to listen carefully for long periods of time before timing his brief, but sometimes crucial, response:

  Acting, to me, is listening, anyway, and with them it was a joy. I mean, I had long, long scenes with Paul and Nigel with just me listening. During rehearsals I used to pretend to nod off and then I’d yawn and say, ‘Are you going to do it like that on the night? Can’t you quicken it up?’ But they would sometimes play a ten-minute scene between them, and then Bernard had a line at the end which took the scene. And they used to look at me and say, ‘Derek, you know, we let you get away with murder!’38

  One late change came when the always-in-demand Sydney Lotterby found himself dealing with so many other projects that, reluctantly, he arranged for his colleague Peter Whitmore to assume responsibility for filming the series. A versatile producer and director in his own right, Whitmore had worked on programmes ranging from Dave Allen at Large to Terry and June, and was trusted implicitly by Lotterby to maintain the established style of the show.

  The recordings – which were usually held in Studio 8 at Television Centre (with an audience of about three hundred) – did indeed run smoothly, and, as a sign of the show’s popularity, the authenticity of the external scenes was further enhanced by the intervention of none other than the Prime Minister herself. When Margaret Thatcher heard that Hacker, in a brief scene in the seventh and final episode (‘A Question of Loyalty’), would be seen visiting the fictional PM, she gave her personal permission for the action to be filmed in Downing Street, and – in an unprecedented move – even allowed Hacker to be shown walking right inside Number Ten.39 Such insider support, now visual as well as verbal, made everyone in the team feel confident that they were making something that was going to be believable on every level.

  When the second series was finally ready to be broadcast, its imminent arrival on the screen was heralded with considerably more publicity and optimism than its predecessor had commanded. There was a picture of the three main actors in character on the front cover of the Radio Times, a few interviews and plenty of positive previews in the papers. The sitcom that had practically crept into view the year before was now being hailed on its return as a significant televisual event.

  The Observer called it the medium’s ‘most sophisticated comedy’,40 while the Daily Express dubbed it one of ‘the wittiest and best’ sitcoms in years.41 There were numerous other similarly admiring and enticing descriptions, from the tabloids to the broadsheets, which encouraged viewers to look out for the show.

  The first episode aired at 9 p.m. on Monday, 23 February 1981, once again on BBC2. The competition that night was not particularly strong – ITV had scheduled against it a repeat edition of its popular police drama The Sweeney, while BBC1 offered the Nine O’Clock News – and Yes Minister came with by far the warmest recommendation of the night.

  Entitled ‘The Compassionate Society’, the opening instalment expertly reintroduced the main characters and their shared situation to viewers. There once again was the Minister, inquisitive and eager, and there was the Permanent Secretary, calm and cautious, and there too was the Principal Private Secretary, willing but often confused. The ties that bound them were as tight as ever, and the dynamism just the same.

  In this cleverly crafted and entertaining episode, Hacker begins more or less where he left off at the end of the last series: alarmed to discover that even his driver appears to be better briefed then he is, infuriated to find that his plans – at least the ones that his civil servants dislike – keep being leaked to the media (‘This isn’t a Department – it’s a colander!’) and still reliant on the fox-fast mind of Sir Humphrey to get him out of trouble. Having been bullied by backbenchers into launching a full independent inquiry into his Department’s half-hearted attempts to streamline National Health Service bureaucracy, he then finds out that a new hospital, built fifteen months ago, is now staffed by 342 administrators and 170 ancillary workers – but has yet to accommodate any patients.

  What follows is a classic Yes Minister scenario with a second-series spin on it. Hacker, fearing multiple personal setbacks, cannot resist daring to dirty his hands, asking Sir Humphrey if they could ensure that the Department is exonerated by rigging the ‘independent’ inquiry, and do something about the empty hospital before the press finds out about it.

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p; Sir Humphrey, in his usual Jeeves-like way, responds by suggesting that they appoint a peerage-hunting retired civil servant to chair it, and, unbeknown to his Minister, he also plots to push the hospital’s ancillary workers into strike action to save their – and by implication the administrative staff’s – jobs. The attempt to rig the inquiry, however, goes awry when it turns out that the ‘sound’ chairman of their inquiry is also responsible for the Joint Committee for the Resettlement of Refugees, and, after calculating that he has more chance of gaining a peerage by pleasing the latter rather than the former, he threatens to come down against the DAA unless the UK agrees to admit and house a thousand new refugees.

  With Sir Humphrey flustered, it is Hacker, rather than his Permanent Secretary, who finds a solution to this particular conundrum by proposing that they use the refugees to fill up their hospital. Triumphant, he then dictates a press release to Woolley, depicting himself as the principled defender of the ‘compassionate society’.

  Watched by an audience estimated at three million,42 it was a splendid start to the series, reaffirming all that was intelligent, impressive and attractive about its predecessor, but also suggesting, as Sydney Lotterby had demanded, that some things had changed. The character of Hacker, especially, appeared slightly more complex, with his old insecurity and vanity balanced more steadily by a slightly sharper mind and a much more cynical soul. Viewers had thus been given what they wanted, but even better than they had expected.