A Very Courageous Decision
Page 33
HACKER:
You mean they’ll block it?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Yup.
The writing, as usual, is on the wall at Whitehall, and Hacker, like Sir Keith before him, knows that his plan is doomed. Jonathan Lynn did not see the episode as the show ‘taking sides’; he and Jay saw themselves merely recording how things worked, or failed to work, in the 1980s.43 Antony Jay, while acknowledging his personal preferences, would make much the same point: ‘It might have been that we, not as experts but as outside observers, thought that certain policy options were viable and good, but that was as far as it ever went. We were not trying to abolish the DES, though if it had come as a result of our programme we would not have been shocked or saddened particularly’.44
The series concluded by returning its focus to the more personal dimension of the relationship between Hacker and Sir Humphrey. Ever since that first day back in 1980 at the DAA, this trapped relationship between politician and civil servant had given all of the show’s ideas and themes their flesh, bones and blood, their human mise en scène, and it was therefore only fitting that the finale should explore this strangely intimate partnership one more time.
Entitled ‘The Tangled Web’, the story (another strikingly prescient one, bearing in mind later real-life hacking scandals) concerned surveillance, secrecy and survival. It begins with Hacker in an unusually ebullient mood, boasting about his latest performance in the Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions. ‘They were on their feet,’ he says of his backbenchers, ‘cheering, stamping, waving their order papers!’
Unfortunately, it turns out that one of his answers was problematic. When asked if he had authorised the tapping of an MP, Hugh Halifax’s, telephone, Hacker had denied any such involvement, dismissing the accusation as ‘sheer paranoia’. Sir Humphrey, however, is furious about this response:
SIR HUMPHREY:
So, I gather you denied that Mr Halifax’s phone had been bugged?
HACKER:
Well, obviously, it was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Yes, unfortunately although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement, inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.
HACKER:
Epistemological? What are you talking about?
SIR HUMPHREY:
You told a lie.
HACKER:
A lie??
SIR HUMPHREY:
A lie.
HACKER:
What do you mean a lie?
SIR HUMPHREY:
I mean you … lied. Yes, I know, this is a difficult concept to get across to a politician. Um, you, um … ah, yes: you did not tell the truth.
It turns out that, up until about seventeen minutes ago, Hugh Halifax’s telephone was indeed being tapped. This means that the Prime Minister has, unknowingly but still technically, misled the House of Commons.
Hacker is horrified. Why, he exclaims, was he not told about this? Sir Humphrey tries to explain:
SIR HUMPHREY:
It was thought that it was better not to inform you. You see, Hugh Halifax is one of your Government team and as such it was thought that it was better not to create distrust. We only tell you when you should be aware.
HACKER:
And when’s that?
SIR HUMPHREY:
You should now be aware because you’ve just denied it.
HACKER:
Well, it would have been rather more helpful if I’d been aware before I denied it!
SIR HUMPHREY:
On the contrary, Prime Minister, if you had been aware before you denied it, you wouldn’t have denied it.
HACKER:
But I needed to know!
SIR HUMPHREY:
We do not always tell you about bugging when you need to know.
WOOLLEY:
You see, at times, Prime Minister, we need you not to know.
HACKER:
Why did you decide that I didn’t need to know?
SIR HUMPHREY:
I didn’t.
HACKER:
Well, who did?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Nobody. It was just that nobody decided to tell you.
HACKER:
Well, that’s the same thing!
SIR HUMPHREY:
On the contrary, Prime Minister. To decide to conceal information from you is a heavy burden for any official to shoulder, but to decide not to reveal information to you is routine procedure.
Hacker is none the wiser, but he does know that there has been a terrible ‘cock-up’ and, as a result, his political future is in peril. Sir Humphrey, however, does not seem very sympathetic, pointing out that the Prime Minister ‘should not have denied something about which you did not know’, and, crucially, he made that error of judgement because he did not first clear his answers with his officials.
There is worse news to come. Sir Humphrey has been summoned by the House of Commons Privileges Committee to respond to the allegations about the matter. He knows what lies in store – if he tries to dodge the damning questions, they will ask him why he will not give the same clear denial that the Prime Minister has already given the House of Commons – so even he is unsure how best to proceed.
Hacker is shaken badly enough when he first hears of this development, but is left even worse when he encounters Sir Humphrey at his most pompous:
HACKER:
You’ll just have to confirm what I said in the House.
SIR HUMPHREY:
But that would be lying.
HACKER:
Well … [whispers conspiratorially] nobody would know.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave!
HACKER:
Humphrey! You must! Otherwise it’ll look as though I was lying!
[Sir Humphrey looks unconvinced]
HACKER:
Humphrey – you have a loyalty!
SIR HUMPHREY:
[Solemnly] To the truth. I’m sorry, Prime Minister, I cannot become involved in some shabby cover-up.
The Cabinet Secretary then departs to give a rare interview to BBC Radio 3. He is his usual impenetrable self throughout the conversation, but then, once it is over, he relaxes and speaks with dangerous candour on a range of potentially inflammatory topics, including the ‘parasites’ among the unemployed, entirely unaware that the tape is still running.
Once, back in Whitehall, he receives what appears to be an advance copy of the programme, he is horrified to hear that all of his most indiscreet ‘off the record’ remarks have been included. ‘What am I going to do?’ he asks Woolley, looking utterly helpless and despondent.
Luckily for him, Woolley realises that the producer is an old friend of his from their time together at Oxford, so he races off and takes possession of the offending master tape. Before he reassures Sir Humphrey, however, he decides to let the Prime Minister in on the secret, and plays him the tape.
Hacker, realising its significance, is delighted. Parity, in his daily power struggle with Sir Humphrey, is about to be restored.
When Sir Humphrey arrives in the Cabinet Room, Hacker relishes the opportunity to play back the recording and watch his old colleague squirm. Sure enough, the sound of each incriminating word hammers another nail into the coffin of Sir Humphrey’s composure, draining the blood from his frightened face. Once the tape has been heard in all of its horror, Hacker – adopting the stock political pose of studied solemnity – warns him of what a disaster it would be if such loose talk should ever reach the papers. Q
uivering with contrition, Sir Humphrey is pathetically eager to prove his remorse, and is even prepared to lie – or, as he prefers to put it, ‘issue a clarification’ – in order to explain away the potential embarrassment. ‘Clarification,’ he tries to explain with a nervously conspiratorial snigger, ‘is not to make oneself clear; it is to put oneself in the clear’. Hacker, struggling to hide his delight at hearing such a naked offer of deceit, looks at the blanched and bowed Sir Humphrey knowingly and then remarks: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave!’
The torture over, Hacker assures Sir Humphrey that he has possession of the only existing copies of the recording. He cannot resist, however, withholding them for a while longer, claiming that he needs to ponder the security issues involved: ‘I certainly have no intention of joining in some shabby cover-up …’
Then, as if apropos of nothing in particular, he asks Sir Humphrey if he has decided yet what he will tell the Privileges Committee:
SIR HUMPHREY:
Ah, yes, Prime Minister, I have decided that in the interests of, ah, national security, that, um, the only honourable course is to support your statement in the House.
HACKER:
And say that Hugh Halifax’s telephone has never been bugged?
SIR HUMPHREY:
And say that I have no evidence––
HACKER:
No, Humphrey! And say the Government has never authorised the bugging of MPs’ telephones!
SIR HUMPHREY:
And say the Government has never authorised the … [He shivers with discomfort] Supposing they find out the truth?
HACKER:
You’ll just have to say that nobody told you. Because you didn’t need to know. Agreed?
[Sir Humphrey sighs dejectedly]
HACKER:
Splendid. Well, that’s settled, then!
[Sir Humphrey rises, and holds out his hands]
SIR HUMPHREY:
May one have one’s tapes back?
[Hacker moves to hand them over, hesitates, then thinks better of it]
HACKER:
Tomorrow. After the Committee on Privileges. All right, Humphrey?
SIR HUMPHREY:
[Glumly] Yes, Prime Minister.
This time, Sir Humphrey had been thwarted. The next time, one suspected, Hacker would probably be the one to lose out. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be. That was the main message that came from this, and all of the other, episodes.
For that run at least, though, that was the end of it. The music began, the credits rolled, the audience applauded, the programme ended. The series was over.
There was no audible or on-screen announcement about what, if anything, was happening next with Yes, Prime Minister. All that was said was that this was the end of the run. The show’s most avid fans were left in the dark, hoping that a third series would soon come.
12
The End
Style is an instrument, and is made imperishable only by embodiment in some great use. It is not of itself stuff to last; neither can it have real beauty except when working the substantial effects of thought or vision. Its highest triumph is to hit the meaning; and the pleasure you get from it is not unlike that which you get from the perfect action of skill.
The third series never did come. That final instalment, which went out on 28 January 1988, would be the last. After thirty-eight episodes in eight years, Yes Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, was at an end.
It had gone out at the top, as the team had wanted. The last series attracted the usual critical applause (the Observer, for example, judged it ‘nearly perfect’1) and awards (including a fourth BAFTA for Nigel Hawthorne – again, alas, at Paul Eddington’s expense – and a richly deserved special writers’ award for Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn).
It was repeated at the end of 1988 on BBC1, and, just like the previous series, brought in a bigger audience. There was still no official confirmation that the sitcom was now over. There would be the occasional comment in the newspapers expressing hope that another series would soon be announced, and critics continued to refer to the show in the present tense as if it remained a going concern. It just never returned.
When asked, twenty-six years later, whether there had been any doubt in the two writers’ minds as to the fate of the programme, Antony Jay was inclined, on reflection, to say that the line had indeed been drawn: ‘It was fairly clear to me and Johnny that Paul [Eddington] wasn’t up to another series. Also, Johnny and I felt we had pretty well exhausted the possibilities – if we went on we’d be in danger of repeating ourselves.’2 Jonathan Lynn, however, would reply to the same question with a playfully ambiguous answer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And no.’3
‘We’d had a wrap party,’ Derek Fowlds would later recall, ‘at which we all got rather merry! And we knew that Johnny and Tony had said that they probably weren’t doing any more. So we sort of knew that that was it. But we always knew that all of us would stay friends, so that made it easier. The friendships would go on.’4
Nothing was ruled out definitively in the years that followed, except for the idea of reuniting just to do more of the same. Everyone was busy doing other things, but there would still be isolated moments, every now and again, when Jay or Lynn would wonder if there was something more that might be done with the show and its main characters.
Lynn even toyed with the idea of taking the satire inside of the House of Commons itself. ‘I wanted Paul to stand for Parliament,’ he later revealed. ‘I wanted him to change his name by deed poll to “Jim Hacker”. And in an election he would have won. And I said, “If you become an MP, I promise to write all your speeches, and we can have a tremendous amount of fun.” And Paul was a responsible kind of person, he said, “That would bring the whole edifice tumbling down in ruins”, and I said, “Well, yes, it might!” So he said: “No, no, I can’t do that!”’5
It was not only the BBC that remained open to the idea of a return. Every now and again the notion of a stage version would be proposed by some or other impresario, but, as Antony Jay would reveal, ‘Paul and Nigel couldn’t commit for more than a three-month run, whereas managements would have needed at least six months to recoup their investment, and we felt that no one else could really play it while they were around.’6 A movie version was mooted as well (‘I don’t know if we ever got as far as “seriously” discussing a film with the actors,’ Lynn would say. ‘We would have mentioned that we were thinking about it’7), but, once again, it proved too difficult to reassemble all the members of the cast. The team, it seemed, had dispersed for good.
Both of the writers were in many ways rather relieved finally to have their respective solo careers free from further interruption. After being obliged to put so many other interests and ventures on hold while they buried themselves in the research that each Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister script required, they could at last find the time for different ways to work and play.
Antony Jay continued to lead a very contented life, with his wife Rosemary, at their home in Langport, Somerset (which was also, entirely aptly, the birthplace of that other great analyst of the British Constitution, Walter Bagehot). As the older of the two writers – he was fifty-eight when the sitcom ended – he was now more interested in leisure than labour, but remained open to any new projects that intrigued him.
In 1988, his place within the very Establishment that he had done so much to satirise was well and truly assured when he was awarded a knighthood for services to broadcasting. ‘He really got it,’ said Jonathan Lynn, only half jokingly, ‘for services to the Conservative Party – something I would never have got and would never have wanted!’8 He and John Cleese then sold their Video Arts production company in 1989 for the reported sum of £50 million.9
Further honours, of the kind that would certainly have pleased Sir Humphrey, would come in the years that followed. In 1992, for example, Jay was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Companion of the Institute of Manage
ment; in 1993, he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order; and, in 2001, he was made an Honorary Fellow of his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Wealthy and widely respected, he was free to do more or less whatever he wanted, when and where he wanted. He continued working on training films, documentaries (including the BBC’s Elizabeth R in 1992) and royal broadcasts, and he wrote and edited numerous books (including The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations in 1996) as well as the occasional pamphlet on business, broadcasting and political issues. He also spent plenty of time sitting in his garden and sampling some of the bottles from his large and very impressive cellar of fine vintage wines.
Jonathan Lynn was by this point living in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, with his psychotherapist wife, Rita. Aged just forty-five when the show finished, he was still very ambitious and particularly eager to develop his newly established Hollywood career as a director. Having enjoyed a major commercial hit in 1990 with the comedy Nuns on the Run (which starred his fellow Pembroke alumnus, Eric Idle, along with Robbie Coltrane), he went on to work steadily in the industry, making several more noteworthy movies including My Cousin Vinny (1992), The Whole Nine Yards (2000) and Wild Target (2010).
The actors, meanwhile, did what was natural and looked for other work. Yes, Prime Minister was a hard show to follow, but at least its extraordinary success meant that its stars were not short of offers.