The Complete Yes Minister

Target!

So Annie and I were escorted to a cramped little table in a poky little corner next to the kitchen doors. They banged open and shut right beside us, throughout our meal.

As we sat down I was briefed by one of the detectives. ‘You sit here. Constable Ross will sit over there, watching the kitchen door – that’s your escape route. We don’t expect any assassins to be among the kitchen staff as we only booked in here late morning. I’ll sit by the window. And if you do hear any gunshots, just dive under the table and I’ll take care of it.’

I’m sure he meant to be reassuring.

I informed him that I wasn’t a bit worried. Then I heard a loud report close to my head, and I crashed under the table.

An utterly humiliating experience – some seconds later I stuck my head out and realised that a champagne bottle had just been opened for the next table. I had to pretend that I’d just been practising.

By this time, with all this talk of escape routes, assassins in the kitchen and so forth, I’d gone right off my food. So had Annie. And our appetites weren’t helped by overhearing one of the detectives at the next table order a spaghetti Bolognese followed by a T-bone steak with beans, peas, cauliflower and chips – and a bottle of Chateau Baron Philippe Rothschild 1961, no less!

He saw us staring at him, beamed, and explained that his job really took it out of him.

We stuck it for nearly two days. We went to the cinema on Saturday evening, but that made Annie even more furious. She’d wanted to see La Cage aux Folles but in the end we went to a James Bond film – I knew that none of the detectives liked foreign films, and it didn’t seem fair to drag them along to a French film with subtitles.

Annie was black with rage because I’d put their choice first. When she put it like that, I saw what she meant. I hated the Bond film anyway – it was all about assassination attempts, and I couldn’t stand it.

The detectives were very fed up with us when we walked out halfway through it.

Finally, back in our hotel, lying in the bed, rigid with tension, unable to go to the loo without being observed, followed and overheard, we heard the following murmured conversation outside the bedroom door.

‘Are they going out again?’

‘No, they’ve turned in for the night.’

‘Is the target in there now?’

‘Yeah – target’s in bed with his wife.’

‘They don’t seem to be enjoying their holiday, do they?’

‘No. Wonder why.’

We decided to get up and go home then and there.

But did we find peace and quiet? You bet we didn’t. When we got to Birmingham at 1.45 a.m. on Sunday morning, the front garden was knee-deep in the local bluebottles, all wanting to show that they were doing their bit. The flowerbeds were trampled underfoot, searchlights playing constantly on all sides of the house, Alsatians baring their teeth and growling . . . Bedlam!

So now we lay in our own beds, still rigid with tension, still unable to go to the loo without some flat-foot examining it first, still with detectives knocking on the bedroom door and barging straight in while saying, ‘May I just check your windows sir,’ but with the additional pleasures of dogs barking and searchlights lighting up the whole room at intervals of twenty-nine seconds.

I told Annie, pathetically trying to make the best of it all, that she’d soon get used to being a famous man’s wife. She didn’t say anything. I think she’d almost rather be a famous man’s widow.

Thank God we still weren’t subject to surveillance at home.

Secret photo (released by the Special Branch at New Scotland Yard after the passing of the Freedom of Information Act, 1994) showing Mr and Mrs Hacker in bed at their home on 12 April.

April 13th

Easter Monday I slept all day, since it’s impossible to sleep at night.

Today I was back in the office and trying to handle a difficult interview with the dreadful Walter Fowler, who had somehow got wind of the petition. He seemed to find it extraordinary that I had now suppressed the petition that I started the year before last. Of course, he didn’t know that my changed circumstances had made me see the whole matter of surveillance in a fresher and clearer way.

‘I don’t follow,’ he complained. ‘You say you’re out to stop bugging and phone tapping. And now you get this petition. Two and a quarter million signatures. A terrific boost to your case. And you won’t even give me a quote saying you welcome it?’

I made an unshakeable resolve to stay silent. Anything I said was liable to be quoted. You can’t ever trust the press.

‘What about making a promise to implement its main recommendations?’

I realised that I had to break my unshakeable resolve. ‘Well you see Walter,’ I began in most condescending manner, ‘things aren’t that simple.’

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Security considerations,’ I said.

‘There always were,’ he said. ‘But you said yourself that “security” is the last excuse of a desperate bureaucrat.’