Humphrey Appleby

It's like a football manager who's come in sort of like a rude hoolet trying to get rid of Alan Shearer or something.

It's a risky decision, isn't it? Humphrey Appleby talking to Jim Hacker, you know, what a courageous move, Minister, what a courageous move, Prime Minister.

It is a courageous move, isn't it, by Paul Farber? Yes, it

is.

Do you remember who played Jim Hacker, Tim? Anyway, it was a great show.

But there's a line in it where Bernard, who is the Principal Private Secretary to the Minister, is talking to Sir Humphrey.

He says, I don't understand why the Minister wants to do this.

How do you cope with all of these changes in policy direction? And Sir Humphrey says, look, if I actually...

cared about what the policy direction of the government was, I'd be stark raving mad because one minute I'd be pro-nationalising steel, I'd be then pro-denationalising steel and then I'd be pro-renationalising steel because those things change.

You've got to be flexible in government.

But that meant that there were requests coming at odd hours.

He'd be flying back from a meeting at DC.

My best friend at school, his father was a very senior civil servant.

If you know, yes, minister and yes, prime minister, his father eventually became a Sir Humphrey.

you know, the top role in a department of the civil service.

And his father was knighted for that role.

And then his son got married in Westminster Abbey, and I was best man, you know, the whole thing.

But we used to watch Yes... at the time, yes, prime minister.

And I used to watch it round at their house with this guy who was a real Sir Humphrey in the show.

And he was Sir Humphrey at the Department of Works and Pensions.

The permanent staff was always there.

Was Sir Humphrey like permanent staff?

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

Member of Parliament.

As a ministry.

So the only member of Parliament is the minister played by Chris Lagan, but everyone else is either a special advisor employed by the minister or by the party, or they're a civil servant like Sir Humphrey.

Okay.

Honestly.

And you call it Yes Ministers because, of course, why don't you just both take us through briefly your CVs because you are the Jim Hacker of the two of you and you are Mr Humphrey.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes.

I've just worked out, I think, about 21 years, something like that.

Anyway, so that was a spectrum.

So I covered two roles in Yes Minister, both Sir Humphrey and Bernard.

I started off in the treasury in 1962, and then I went first of all to number 10 under Ted Heath in 1972, and then I subsequently worked either as private secretary, Bernard, or as cabinet secretary, Sir Humphrey, first of all to Ted Heath, then to Harold Wilson, then to Margaret Thatcher, then to John Major, and finally I gave up under Tony Blair, or at least I was retired out under Tony Blair.

Most of the episodes of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister have at their heart a policy argument.

And it is usually Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey on different sides of that debate.

But there is a kind of debate about policy.

And a lot of those policy debates... were relevant then, were relevant before it, and have been relevant since.

I said, yeah.

And then he gave me the most beautiful Sir Humphrey, yes, minister kind of rinse.

And it began with, he said, well, look, the only things I would suggest, he said, number one is you just have to think how it's going to be read on the front page of the Daily Telegraph when the Howard government cuts funding to the poorest of the poor.

Okay.

Now it's perhaps looking a little bit more yes minister-esque.

Are you dealing with Sir Humphrey here? Th-there's never any chance that these restrictions are gonna be lifted.

I, I have a lot of sympathy with the view of residents who have said that.

Uh, it...