The Complete Yes Minister

laughed it off and said it was an absurd thing to say.

Brian asked why.

‘There are great advantages to having your MP in the Cabinet,’ I told him.

‘Funny we haven’t noticed them, have we, Harry?’

Harry Sutton shook his head. ‘Such as?’

‘Well . . .’ And I sighed. They always do this to you in your constituency, they feel they have to cut you down to size, to stop you getting too big for your boots, to remind you that you need them to re-elect you.

‘It reflects well on the constituency,’ I explained. ‘And it’s good to have powerful friends. Influence in high places. A friend in need.’

Harry nodded. ‘Well, listen ’ere, friend – what we need is one and a half million quid.’

I had never imagined that they thought I could solve their financial problems. Was that what they thought, I wondered? So I nodded non-committally and waited.

‘So will you use all that influence to help us?’ asked Harry.

Clearly I had to explain the facts of life to them. But I had to do it with tact and diplomacy. And without undermining my own position.

‘You see,’ I began carefully, ‘when I said influence I meant the more, er, intangible sort. The indefinable, subtle value of an input into broad policy with the constituency’s interest in mind.’

Harry was confused. ‘You mean no?’

I explained that anything I can do in a general sense to further the cause I would certainly do. If I could. But it’s scarcely possible for me to pump one and a half million into my local football club.

Harry turned to Brian. ‘He means no.’

Brian Wilkinson helped himself to another handful of peanuts. How does he stay so thin? He addressed me through the newest mouthful, a little indistinctly.

‘There’d be a lot of votes in it. All the kids coming up to eighteen, too. You’d be the hero of the constituency. Jim Hacker, the man who saved Aston Wanderers. Safe seat for life.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘That might just strike the press too. And the opposition. And the judge.’

They stared at me, half-disconsolately, half-distrustfully. Where, they were wondering, was all that power that I’d been so rashly talking about a few minutes earlier? Of course the truth is that, at the end of the day, I do indeed have power (of a sort) but not to really do anything. Though I can’t expect them to understand that.

Harry seemed to think that I hadn’t quite grasped the point. ‘Jim,’ he explained slowly, ‘if the club goes to the wall it’ll be a disaster. Look at our history.’

We all looked sadly around the room, which was lined with trophies, pennants, photos.

‘FA Cup Winners, League Champions, one of the first teams ever into Europe,’ he reminded me.

I interrupted his lecture. ‘I know all this. But be fair, Harry, it’s a local matter. Not ministerial.’ I turned to Wilkinson. ‘Brian, you’re Chairman of the Borough Arts and Leisure Committee. Can’t you do something?’

Attack is always the best form of defence. Wilkinson was instantly apologising in the same vein as me. ‘You’re joking. I spent half yesterday trying to raise seven hundred and eleven quid to repoint the chimney of the Corn Exchange Art Gallery.’

‘That miserable place?’ I asked. ‘Why not just let it fall down?’

He said he’d love to. But if it did actually fall down on somebody the Council would be liable. The Borough owns the place. And, ironically, they keep getting offers for the site. There was one from Safefare Supermarkets only last month.

It was as he said this that I had one of my great flashes of inspiration. From out of nowhere ‘The Idea’ occurred to me. An idea of such brilliance and simplicity that I myself can, even now, be hardly sure that I thought of it all by myself, completely unprompted. But I did! It is ideas of this quality that have taken me to the top of my chosen profession and will take me still higher.

But first I had a question to ask. ‘How much did Safefare offer for the site?’

Brian Wilkinson shrugged and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘About two million, I think.’

Then I hit them with it. ‘So – if you sold the art gallery you could save the football club.’

They gazed at me, and then at each other, with wild surmise. Both thinking furiously.

‘Can I have a look at it?’ I asked.

We tore out of Aston Park. The traffic had nearly cleared, the fans dispersed, the police horses had done their Saturday afternoon cavalry charge, and all the hooligans had been trampled on or arrested. We raced through the deserted early evening streets to the Corn Exchange. It was due to shut at 5.30. We got there just after it closed.

We stepped out of Harry’s Rolls in front of the art gallery, stood still, and looked up at our target. To tell the truth, I’d never really looked at it before. It is a Victorian monster, red-brick, stained glass, battlements and turrets, big and dark and gloomy.

‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ I said to Brian Wilkinson.

‘Yeah, well, it’s a Grade II listed building, isn’t it?’ he explained.

That certainly is the problem.