A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  HACKER:

  And what, pray, is that?

  MRS RODGERS:

  It is won by the most hygienic hospital in the area.

  The whole scenario sounded unusually implausible and exaggerated for a Yes Minister script, but, once again, it was actually rooted in truth. Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn had researched the topic as carefully as they always did, and had found plenty of real-life cases that inspired them to write the story.

  In January 1976, for example, a new geriatric hospital in Coventry was declared ready to be filled, but six months later it was still vacant, causing the Minister for Health to explain in the House of Commons: ‘It has not yet been brought into use because discussions over the allocation of beds between geriatrics and psychogeriatrics have not been completed.’60 More recently, in 1980, it was revealed in the Commons that the number of new hospitals in the UK that were either not fully utilised or completely empty was fourteen.61

  Jonathan Lynn was particularly amused to read a newspaper report, a little later, of one newly constructed hospital in Cambridgeshire, which contained only one solitary patient. It was the Matron, who had tripped over some scaffolding and broken her leg.62

  By the time the episode reached the screen, the phenomenon was actually getting worse. A further report, this time made by the Public Accounts Committee in 1981, would bemoan the spread of bureaucracy within the NHS and criticise it for failing to coordinate the building of new hospitals with the preparation of proper plans to staff and populate them.63

  The impact of the episode was so great that it would end up being used as an unofficial Video Arts-style training film for some civil servants. David Blunkett, when he was Secretary of State for Education and Employment from 1997 to 2001, used to show a tape of it to officials during ‘strategy awaydays’ as a gentle reminder that they should be more concerned about outcomes rather than defending their Department at all costs. ‘I feared,’ he would say of the storyline, ‘that that’s what might happen if we didn’t connect the Civil Service with delivery on the ground. Not with policy development – which they’re very good at. Not with preparation for legislation and carrying it through the House – which they’re very good at. But actually the delivery of something out there in the community.’64

  As happened so often with a Jay and Lynn script, the episode not only imitated actual cases but would also anticipate future ones. In this latter sense, there would be a curious coda to this comic tale.

  The exterior scenes were shot outside the Medical School in the Reynolds Building at Charing Cross Hospital in St Dunstan’s Road, west London. The more significant interior scenes, however, were filmed in the Lancaster Ward of Putney Hospital in Lower Common, Putney, southwest London. It would be this hospital that would end up as a sad case of fact imitating fiction.

  It would not happen immediately. Indeed, in the few years after serving as the site of the fictional St Edwards, Putney Hospital (which had opened its doors in 1912) would remain busy and relatively well regarded. It was the source of a ‘good news’ story in 1983, when it admitted fourteen-year-old Sandy Walker, who was suffering from diabetes, as a patient, even though Walker happened to be a dog; apart from receiving insulin injections, he also had an operation to remove some kidney stones, all on the NHS.65 Jonathan Lynn would also return to the hospital at the end of the decade to shoot some scenes for his movie, Nuns on the Run (which was released in 1990).

  In the next few years that followed, however, the good news dried up dramatically, to be replaced by dark tales of bad management, swingeing budget cuts and a ‘surplus of beds’; the place went into a sharp decline. The curse of Jim Hacker had struck.

  Ironically, Putney Hospital ended up closing in 1998, and then remained vacant, with most of the equipment still in situ from the day of the closure, doing nothing but gathering dust.66 In 2009, it was revealed that NHS Wandsworth had spent £2.6 million in eight years on securing the now dilapidated site and, supposedly, planning its future. Two years later, the South West London Community NHS Trust blocked the proposed sale of the site because it wanted to further explore the possibility of moving a GP practice or primary care group into the building. No decision was forthcoming.

  Then, in 2012, Wandsworth Council finally purchased the site for £4.4 million and announced plans to demolish most of the building in order to make way for a new primary school and some flats (although a local community group immediately went to the High Court to challenge the plan).67 In February 2013 an internal wall, within the vacant nurses’ accommodation block at the rear of the site, finally crumbled and collapsed as the debate over the former hospital’s future continued.

  Echoes of Jim Hacker’s exasperation, therefore, could still be heard more than three decades after his gasps and groans first reached the screen. Time and again, as the various news stories appeared, people would shake their heads and sigh, muttering: ‘It’s just like Yes Minister’. This was recognition humour of the highest order, and it came with a real and enduring political point.

  7

  Series Three

  He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

  There was only one major aim for the third series of Yes Minister. It had to be the best one yet.

  There had been no doubt that the show would return for another run. Everyone involved with Yes Minister felt that the series still had plenty of creative potential, and it was clear that the demand was there. Apart from the burgeoning viewing figures, there was also some evidence that fans wanted to find other ways to feel that they ‘owned’ the sitcom. Although this was an era long before DVD box sets, let alone endless repeats and cable and internet streaming services – even home video was still very much in its infancy – the BBC was already looking to exploit the popularity of the show, and its commercial wing was thus encouraging the writers to consider potential spin-offs.

  Shortly after completing the second set of scripts, therefore, Jonathan Lynn had been persuaded to start work on adapting all of the episodes for the printed page. ‘We were approached by BBC Publications to allow some rip-off novelisations of the sort that are generally done, and we were not interested,’ Lynn later explained. After further discussions (and an exasperating amount of procrastination by the BBC1), it was decided instead to write something ‘in-house’ that would really do justice to the sitcom: ‘I realised that the only way to do a book of the series was to do it in the style of the Crossman Diaries, as Hacker’s memoirs, recorded each day on his tape recorder, usually a little drunk, blissfully unaware of what Sir Humphrey was doing behind his back.’2

  Entitled Yes Minister: The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister by the Rt Hon. James Hacker MP, the text was published by BBC Books in 1981, and would be followed by two more volumes in 1982 and 1983. ‘It was a very difficult format to write,’ Lynn would reflect, ‘because many scenes in Yes Minister […] do not have Hacker present. So it became necessary to introduce Sir Humphrey’s papers, interviews with Bernard Woolley and extracts from other people’s memoirs. I felt that the books should have real quality in their own right. Antony was too busy with his company, Video Arts, and I was occupied directing plays; but I was able to find time, intermittently, to do these books. Each volume had a Foreword by the “editors” (us), there were lots of editorial comments and footnotes, and other ways of getting in jokes.’3

  One eminent recipient of a copy of the first volume was Sir Robert Armstrong, who was Cabinet Secretary at the time. He was both pleased and relieved to find inside what he took to be confirmation that the occasional rumours within Whitehall, that he had been the model for Sir Humphrey, were actually wide of the mark. ‘Antony Jay gave me a copy of the book of the first series of the programme and he’d written in the front of it: “To Sir Arnold Robins Sir Robert Armstrong”. So I knew I was not Sir Humphrey Appleby!’4

  Apart from the tie-in books (and a forthcom
ing series of vinyl and audio cassette releases5), there was also growing interest in the show itself from various overseas markets. Sales had already been made in numerous parts of Europe, Australasia and elsewhere (totalling thirty-one countries so far6), but now there were plans to start screening Yes Minister in America on its latest pay cable service, The Entertainment Channel, and the format rights to the sitcom had also just been sold to a US television producer. Its remarkable ability to make politics seem entertaining was now being noticed on a global scale.

  Most importantly of all, as far as the next series was concerned, the show’s two writers knew that there was still so much more for them to explore. Every news bulletin, every current affairs programme, every report on proceedings in Parliament, provided them with more ideas for episodes. Another selection of potential plotlines landed on the mat each morning with the delivery of the daily papers.

  They also continued to get inspiration from their regular Whitehall and Westminster sources, as well as from new contacts who had been prompted to get in touch out of admiration, or irritation, following previous instalments of the programme. This show was no tired old domestic sitcom, but was still an exceptionally rich and fascinating affair.

  The actors saw it almost as clearly as the writers. Each of them, by this stage, felt that they understood their respective characters inside out, and was relishing the chance to take them into a new set of situations.

  Paul Eddington, for example, had clearly mastered Hacker’s twitchy mix of vulnerability and hardness, often allowing the character to hide behind a carapace of authority but still showing, through those wide, spaniel-like eyes and that gaping mouth, the mounting panic that lurked inside. Eddington did not just show an idea entering into Hacker’s head; he also showed it bouncing about inside his skull. ‘He was,’ Derek Fowlds would say, ‘the absolute master of the triple take.’7 Few performers could oscillate so swiftly yet believably between composure and distress, and, in doing so, instantly remind one of countless other, real-life politicians of the time. He did not so much hold up a mirror to MPs as a magnifying glass.

  Nigel Hawthorne was, if anything, even more mesmerising as Sir Humphrey. He was one of those actors who was as fascinating to watch for how he was doing something as he was for what he was doing. Lesser actors, blessed with such long, elaborate and elegant monologues, would simply have let the lines roll out, like motionless word dispensers, but Hawthorne always thought, and felt, as he spoke, and made the sound of the words give a sense of the workings of the brain from whence they came.

  Though Derek Fowlds, as Bernard Woolley, was given far less to say or do, he had equally found a fine way to convey what was distinctive about his character, projecting a charmingly gauche and realistic personality during the brief scenes and exchanges in which he featured. While the other two main characters talked to, and at, each other, Fowlds, subtly, cleverly and effectively, showed Woolley listening, thinking and reacting to the content of their conversations, like an umpire at a Wimbledon final. He later recalled: ‘Syd Lotterby had always said to me about my role: “Pivotal, Derek, pivotal!” I liked that. I said, “What does that mean – they can’t do it without me?”’8

  There was similar enthusiasm, and expertise, shown by the team on the other side of the cameras as the third series was planned. More sets were made, with even greater attention to detail, and Peter Whitmore, who was returning to oversee the production in Sydney Lotterby’s continuing absence, developed a few subtle changes to the filming of the new episodes, including more – and more pertinent – close-ups for Bernard Woolley, more varied lighting to match the mood of certain scenes and a little more dynamism inside Hacker’s office.

  Jonathan Lynn, in spite of his own expertise as a theatre director, was not yet tempted to try his hand at shaping the sitcom in the studio, but he and Jay certainly made sure that their opinions were always heard: ‘I never wanted to direct [the show] myself, as I had never directed multi-camera shows in front of a live audience, and both Sydney and Peter were expert at it. But Tony and I attended many rehearsals and were unhesitating about giving our notes, comments and suggestions to the cast. We fulfilled the role that is played today by writer/executive producers in American TV.’9

  ‘They used to come in at the end of the week,’ Derek Fowlds would recall of the two writers, ‘and Paul, Nigel and me – because dear Johnny is quite short and Tony is very tall – we’d mutter to each other: “Watch out – here comes Little and Large!” They’d watch us rehearse this stuff that had been amusing us all week, and Paul, under his breath, used to say, “Have they laughed yet? Have they laughed yet?” And then Nigel would whisper, “I think they’ve smiled.” Happy days, they were.’10

  Jay and Lynn were, as usual, in complete control of their words, although, on a few isolated occasions, they did accept suggestions from the actors. Paul Eddington, for example, was strong-willed enough, as he looked through the new scripts, to stand up to the writers when one passage that seemed to ‘make a bit of a mock’ of the idea of nuclear-free zones (in the episode called ‘The Challenge’) offended his pacifist sensibilities (‘I said to them, “Look, this is going a bit far, isn’t it? I don’t mind saying this, but it doesn’t sound quite as impartial as you usually are.” And they did tone it down a tiny little bit’11). There were also times when the writers, knowing how much meaning the actors could convey with merely an expression, gave them the licence to omit the odd line if they thought just a nuanced look would suffice. The sense of mutual respect, and admiration, had never been so strong.

  Even the BBC’s publicity specialists – never, in truth, the most active and imaginative operators up until that point in time – approached the third series with a greater sense of vigour and thoroughness. They knew, regardless of how high the quality of the next set of shows might be, that the competition for viewers would be more intense than ever.

  This was the beginning of a new age of televisual hype. A fourth channel, the imaginatively named Channel Four, would be launched on 2 November 1982, in part as a consequence of recommendations from the Annan Committee of which Antony Jay had been a member. The third series of Yes Minister was scheduled to start at 9 p.m. on BBC2, nine days later, on Thursday 11 November, just when many viewers might be most distracted by the novelty of a brand new channel. Thus it would need a bigger push than in the past.

  It was clear soon enough in the production process, however, that the publicists would have plenty of positive things to say. This was an award-winning sitcom that was not going to rest on its laurels.

  The third series would run more risks. There would be a restlessness about the show, an edgy drive to thrive, with the team spinning more plates in the air. The overall effect, as a consequence, would be more impressive than ever, even though the odd little item might crash and smash.

  Themes would blend in with each other and build up from week to week. The battle lines between Whitehall and Westminster would be drawn more obliquely as internal factions on both sides formed and faded in response to each issue and debate. Personalities would be probed a little deeper, and some relationships placed under greater stress. Boosted by a slightly bigger budget, there would also be a broader view inside the DAA, with Sir Humphrey being seen chairing various committee meetings, Hacker exploring different offices and areas and one or two other civil servants playing a more prominent role in certain plots.

  Once the series started – screened opposite the news on BBC1, the Dallas-style drama Falcon Crest on ITV and Nadine Gordimer’s post-apartheid parable Six Feet of the Country on Channel Four – it soon resumed its old appeal for viewers and critics alike, and attracted even more enthusiastic reactions than ever. Peaking at 4.45 million viewers during its run, and averaging about 3.70 million per episode, it was still well behind the most crowd-pleasing output on ITV (Coronation Street, which was pulling in around 15 million) and the most popular sitcom currently on BBC1 (Hi-de-Hi!, which was watched by about 11 million viewers
per week), but it was consistently close to the top of BBC2’s highest-rated shows (the channel’s average weekly peak was 7 million) and regularly eclipsed all of Channel Four’s latest offerings.12

  Sometimes the series, straining a little too hard to cover challenging new ground, would misfire and fall slightly below its usual high standards. The final episode, for example, entitled ‘The Middle-Class Rip-Off’, tried to explore the issue of government subsidies for the arts, but ended up seeming more like a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party.

  Lazily parroting Thatcherism’s patronising depiction of working-class people as a bunch of crude Benthamite sybarites who were far too happy playing pushpin in the pubs to ever bother with poetry, it seemed to imply that the state could and should stand aside and allow the market to maintain the existing cultural elites. The old T.H. Green-style liberal desire to help the systematically underprivileged to broaden and better themselves culturally was lampooned via the cartoonishly snobbish Sir Humphrey – ‘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!’ – while Hacker, like Thatcher, sneered at anyone who dared to doubt the dogma of speciously populist cultural relativism (‘Let us choose what we subsidise by the extent of popular demand!’).

  As a clumsy piece of public choice theory propaganda (screened on the public service BBC, to boot), the episode represented a rare error of judgement for a programme that usually operated above, rather than on one or other side of, any particular ideological debate. It misfired not because it ultimately favoured one position over another, but rather because, on this one occasion, it seemed so disinclined even to challenge such a position, and, pandering to certain popular prejudices, thus sounded more like a hectoring monologue than the usual calm, confident and inclusive dialogue.