yes minister

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:

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?

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

[Read more →]

---

1. 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. ↩

Read more about...

yes minister

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.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

yes minister

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:

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:

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.

Read more about...

yes minister

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:

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:

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?

[Read more →]

---

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

Read more about...

yes minister