Return of Yes men

NOW a Coalition government sits in the House of Commons – for the moment – has politics really changed since the Eighties? Not according to Jonathan Lynn and Sir Antony Jay, the writing team behind Yes, Minister, Britain’s best-loved political comedy and the nation’s sixth favourite sitcom of all time.

For almost a decade, BBC’s Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister provided the definitive portrait of Westminster-Whitehall powerplay as embodied by the tug of war between the Rt. Hon James ‘Jim’ Hacker MP and his cabinet secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, brilliantly portrayed by actors Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne. When the final episode aired in 1988, its protagonists seemed destined for the Commons back-benches and a civil service pension respectively.

Then, last year, the two characters returned from the political wilderness to star at Chichester and on the West End stage (starring David Haig and Henry Goodman), sparking a regional tour to Newcastle which sees Richard McCabe as Hacker and Simon Williams as Sir Humphrey.

“I suddenly thought: why don’t we bring them back?” says Lynn. “Everyone thinks politics is different, but Tony and I don’t think it has changed at all. So we thought ‘let’s take some of the world’s increasingly appalling current events, set the show in the present day and see if it can work with different actors’.”

Now Los Angeles-based and better known as a director of such Hollywood hits as My Cousin Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards, Lynn, 67, started life as an actor and is thrilled to be back, writing and directing the new Yes, Prime Minister play.

Jay, meanwhile, is over the moon finally to be working in theatre after a life-time of broadcasting.

“My father was an actor and my mother was an actress so I grew up with the assumption that the most honourable thing human beings could achieve was to give work to actors,” says the octogenarian. “I never imagined I would first have something on the stage after my 80th birthday.”

Lynn chips in: “I’m no spring chicken either.

Between us we’re probably the oldest duo ever to be making our playwriting debut.”

The idea of adapting Yes, Prime Minister for the stage was first floated while the show was still on TV. “Paul and Nigel couldn’t commit for long enough though, and we couldn’t have anyone else in those days,” says Jay.

Sadly both actors died (in 1995 and 2001 respectively) before stage versions of TV started to become popular. Lynn and Jay were approached about adapting some old episodes.

“We thought about it and realised we’d rather do a completely new play.”

Lynn has high hopes for his new touring cast.

“Although they are new faces and the characters were much beloved in their previous incarnation, we’ve found the audience accepts them within minutes,” he says. When Lynn and Jay started work on the new script they were surprised by how quickly the characters came back to them. Jay adds: “I don’t think we ever lost them. I’ve always been the guardian of Humphrey’s soul and Jonny the guardian of Jim’s. So when we were trying to work out a scene, I’d say: ‘Jim would do this.’ And Jonny would be able to say: ‘No, he wouldn’t’. And vice versa. The thing evolved like role play.” Lynn laughs: “I think it’s fair to say that Tony is like Sir Humphrey: a classicist from Cambridge, who became the equivalent of a civil servant in his job at the BBC. I, on the other hand, am like Jim Hacker, an idealist who fails to live up to my ideals, what Graham Green called a ‘whisky priest’. But I try.”

The idea that Whitehall had more power than Westminster was a revelation to the pair in the early days.

Lynn says: “The public knew nothing and the reason? The Official Secrets Act. Our first source book for the show were the diaries of Richard Crossman, Minister for Housing in Wilson’s government from 1964-70. On the very first page, Crossman notes that when his private secretary says ‘Yes, Minister’, what he actually means is ‘No, Minister’. That was our title right there. The government tried to censor the book.

But the Sunday Times took the case to court and won the right to serialise it. And then we came along.”

So has the Freedom of Information Act and a new Coalition government changed anything?

“In degree rather than type,” answers Jay. “Most politicians are still absolutely focused on getting re-elected rather than running the country or achieving the kind of society we should have.

There’s plenty of spin of course, but as Yes, Minister showed, there always was. I don’t think the fundamental relationship has changed, no. If anything, the preoccupation with power has become more naked and all-consuming.”

The show still works, says Jay, because Jim and Humphrey are universal types. “You can move the thing forward in time, with everyone holding blackberries and talking about global warming. But they’re still Jim and Humphrey, the same characters they were 30 years ago.”

Of course, adds Lynn: “Jim has been in power for quite a long time now so he’s a little more in control. He also has a special advisor, or SPAD, in the character of Claire Sutton, which reflects a new reality in Whitehall. SPADS exist to prevent the civil service making ugly mistakes.

Only as it turns out, Claire makes the worst mistake of all.”

To reveal that plotline would be to spoil Lynn and Jay’s intricately constructed play. But do the pair see writing for the stage as different from writing for the small-screen? “Hardly at all,” says Jay. “You have to remember the show was originally filmed in front of a studio audience.

So we always wrote for laughs.”

The main issue, according to Lynn, is how to maintain a story that is two hours long, rather than 28 minutes. “It’s like switching from short stories to a novel. At first it seems as though there are all these different strands, from the BBC to global warming to gas lines to a foreign minister’s dodgy request. But all these things are interwoven as the play reaches its conclusion.

What we needed was a story that sustained itself, not just a collection of episodes.

“People are also sick to death of hearing politicians lying or telling half-truths, and they love to see that ridiculed.”

■ Yes, Prime Minister, Newcastle Theatre Royal, February 22-26. Tickets: £9.50-£31. Box Office: 08448-112-121. theatreroyal.co.uk