The Complete Yes Minister

I thanked him modestly, and asked if we could really do it.

Musing on it for a moment, he said that a special communications room would only be justified if there were a major crisis.

I pointed out that five hours without a drink is a major crisis.

We decided that, as the pound is under pressure at the moment, a communications room could be justified.

Humphrey has promised his enthusiastic support for the project.

[It seems that this diplomatically dangerous prank was put into effect immediately on arrival in Qumran. Certainly, British Embassy files show that instructions for installing a British diplomatic communications room were given on the day the Trade Mission arrived in Qumran. Prince Mohammed gave his immediate permission and a telephone hot line to Downing Street was swiftly installed, plus a scrambler, a couple of Telexes and so forth.

Photo by courtesy of FCO, Middle East Desk

This temporary communications centre was situated in a small ante-room near to one of the Palace’s main reception areas. The following day the British party arrived at the Palace. James Hacker was accompanied by his wife Annie. The Qumranis had found it difficult to refuse permission as Her Majesty the Queen had previously been received at the Palace and thus the precedent had been set for admitting special women on special occasions.

Shortly after the reception began, at which orange juice was being served, Hacker was presented with a gold and silver rosewater jar, as a token of the esteem in which the Qumrani government held the British – Ed.]

May 17th

Yesterday we went to the teetotal reception at Prince Mohammed’s palace, and today I’ve got the most frightful hangover.

Unfortunately I don’t remember the end of the reception awfully clearly, though I do have a hazy memory of Sir Humphrey telling some Arab that I’d suddenly been taken ill and had to be rushed off to bed. Actually that was the truth, if not the whole truth.

It was a very large reception. The British delegation was a bloody sight too big to start with. And then there were an enormous number of Arabs there too.

The evening more or less started with the presentation to me of a splendid gift accompanied by diplomatic speeches about what a pleasure it is to commemorate this day. Subsequently, chatting with one of the Arab guests it transpired that apparently it’s a magnificent example of seventeenth-century Islamic Art, or so he said.

I asked what it was for originally. He said it was a rosewater jar. I said I supposed that that meant it was for rosewater, and the conversation was already getting rather bogged down along these lines when Bernard arrived at my elbow with the first of the evening’s urgent and imaginative messages. Though I must admit that, at first, I didn’t quite follow what he was saying.

‘Excuse me, Minister, there is an urgent call for you in our communications room. A Mr Haig.’

I thought he meant General Haig. But no.

‘I actually mean Mr Haig, Minister – you know, with the dimples.’

I nodded in a worried sort of way, said ‘Ah yes’ importantly, excused myself and hurried away to the communications room.

I must say Humphrey had seen to it that someone had set the whole thing up beautifully. Phones, Telex, a couple of our security chaps with walkie-talkies, cipher machines, the works.

And just in case the place was bugged by our hosts I was careful not to ask for a drink but to ask for the message from Mr Haig. Immediately one of our chaps poured some Scotch into my orange juice. It looked browner, but no one could really tell.

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:³

The official reception at the Palace of Qumran was an evening that I shall never forget. Firstly, there was the extraordinary strain of covering up for Hacker’s increasing drunkenness. And not only Hacker, in fact: several members of the British delegation were in on the secret and it was noticeable that their glasses of orange juice became more and more golden brown as the evening wore on.

But that evening also saw the start of a most unfortunate chain of events that might have led to an early end of my career.

Mrs Hacker was the only woman present. They’d made her a sort of honorary man for the evening. And while Hacker was off getting one of his refills, she remarked that the rosewater jar would look awfully good on the corner table of her hall in London.

It fell to me to explain to her that it was a gift to the Minister.

At first she didn’t understand, and said that it was his hall too. I had to explain that it was a gift to the Minister qua Minister, and that she would not be allowed to keep it. I was naturally mindful of the near-scandal caused by the Tony Crosland coffee-pot incident, which had occurred only a few years earlier.

She wanted to know if they were supposed to give it back. Clearly not. I explained that it would have been a frightfully insulting thing to do. So she observed, rather sensibly, that if she couldn’t keep it and couldn’t give it back, she couldn’t see what she could do.

I explained that official gifts become the property of the government, and are stored in some basement somewhere in Whitehall.

She couldn’t see any sense in that. I couldn’t either, except that clearly it is not in the public interest for Ministers to be allowed to receive valuable gifts from anybody. I explained that one might keep a gift valued up to approximately fifty pounds.