'Yes Minister - Party Games'

'Yes Minister - Party Games'

The other day I posted a photo of the spine of my copy of 'The Complete Yes Prime Minister' which illustrated just how many times I've re-read this wonderful book. It's nearly 500 pages of brilliant writing with plots structured like a chess game plus bonus notes and memos that only add to your enjoyment of the episodes as broadcast.

The original 'Yes Minister' runs for three seasons from February 1980 to December 1982 and 'Yes Prime Minister' begins in January 1986. But in between is the hour-long Christmas special 'Party Games' broadcast on 17th December 1984 which propels Jim Hacker into Number Ten on the back of the infamous Eurosausage.

Achieving 8.2 million viewers on BBC Two, this episode (and the subsequent series) came into being through Bill Cotton's enthusiasm for the show. Upon becoming Director of Television, he was very keen to see more from writers Antony Jay and Johnathan Lynn. This was a very canny move as Jim Hacker's elevation to Prime Minister sees him dealing with much bigger problems. 'The Grand Design' for example concerns the new PM tackling Britain's nuclear defence options, which considering he was once flummoxed by a few badgers, shows how he is completely out of his depth.

But the whole point of 'Party Games' is how unlikely a candidate for high office Jim is. The story opens with him facing up to the heavy responsibility of doing his Christmas cards and later being pulled over by the police when driving home (at approximately nine miles an hour) after the uncomfortable office party.

Sir Humphrey becomes Cabinet Secretary after Sir Arnold takes early retirement, and takes obvious pleasure in subtly ticking off Jim, but it transpires that the Home Secretary was similarly plastered behind the wheel. But his collision with a lorry full of nuclear waste and a car belonging to the editor of a local newspaper is not so easily hushed up.

The PM resigns (alledgedly he just held on until the Home Secretary was out of the picture) and two candidates emerge in the form of Eric Jeffries (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Duncan Short (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs).

Both of whom, as it turns out, are pretty unsuitable for the post. At least according to the confidential reports from the Special Branch, the Fraud Squad, the Inland Revenue and a host of others...

Jim (as Party Chairman) is encouraged to make them stand aside for a 'compromise candidate' - someone "who knows how to take advice". In other words, Jim himself.

But he needs a political victory as soon as possible to make himself acceptable to the Party and electorate at large. And this is provided in the form of the aforementioned Eurosausage.

The EEC Agricultural Commissioner has advised that the typical British sauage is so low in quality that it cannot be considered a sausage at all. By European standards, its actual description should be an "Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube". Mmm, tasty...

But by digging his heels in, Jim is able to get our gristly bangers renamed as The British Sausage. Politics is all about presentation as Sir Humphrey remarks.

With a somewhat rambling but impassioned speech about the European Ideal getting some carefully-placed airtime on the BBC, Jim claims he has "never sought office", thus signalling his real intentions.

With his rivals out of the running, Hacker gets the news he has always wanted and the stage is set for another sixteen episodes of a show I absolutely love to bits.

Quite literally in the case of the books...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)