The Complete Yes Minister

Ed.] but also that the new Propanol plant would be in her constituency.

I told Bernard to bring her in. To my surprise (well, not quite to my surprise) Humphrey appeared at the door and asked if he could join us.

She came in, and I introduced her to Humphrey. She’s in her late thirties, quite attractive in a pulled-through- a-hedge-backwards Shirley Williams’ sort of way, and her slightly soft feminine manner disguises a hard-nosed opportunist. And she has the PM’s ear, of course.

There was something rather aggressive about her opening gambit.

‘Look here, Jim, what’s the British Chemical Corporation up to in my constituency?’

‘Well . . .’ I began.

Sir Humphrey interrupted. ‘They will shortly be announcing a very exciting project involving new jobs and new investment.’

She nodded, and turned to me. ‘Yes, but there are some very worrying rumours about this project.’

‘Such as?’ I enquired in my most helpful tone.

She eyed me carefully. ‘Rumours about dangerous chemicals.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, well,’ I began, ‘obviously all chemicals have some element of danger . . .’

Humphrey interrupted again. ‘The Minister means that the rumours are completely unfounded and there is no cause for alarm.’

I nodded. It was a good reply.

She didn’t seem to think so. ‘All the same,’ she persisted, ‘can I have your assurance, Jim, that first of all there’ll be a full public enquiry?’

This seemed, I must say, a perfectly reasonable request. ‘Actually,’ I began, ‘there’d be no harm in having a public enquiry, it might be . . .’

Humphrey interjected. ‘The Minister was about to say that there is absolutely no need for a public enquiry. The whole matter has been fully investigated already and a report will be published shortly.’

Humphrey, it seemed to me, was being a little high-handed. Clearly Joan thought so too.

‘Listen,’ she said forcefully, ‘I came here to talk to Jim.’

And Humphrey, as charming as ever, replied, ‘And indeed you are talking to him.’

‘But he’s not answering! You are!’

I could quite see her point. Humphrey’s helpfulness will sometimes achieve the opposite effect from what it is designed to achieve. Unfortunately, he is insensitive to this.

‘The Minister and I,’ continued Sir Humphrey complacently, ‘are of one mind.’

She was incensed. ‘Whose mind? Your mind?’ She turned on me. ‘Listen, I’ve heard on the grapevine that this factory will be making the chemical that poisoned Seveso and the whole of Northern Italy.’

‘That’s not true,’ I replied, before Humphrey could screw things up further. I explained that the chemical in Seveso was dioxin, whereas this is metadioxin.

‘But,’ she asserted, ‘that must be virtually the same thing.’

I assured her that it was merely a similar name.

‘But,’ she insisted, ‘it’s the same name, with “meta” stuck on the front.’

‘Ah yes,’ I agreed, ‘but that makes all the difference.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What does meta mean?’

Of course, I hadn’t the slightest idea. So I was forced to ask Humphrey.

‘Simple, Minister,’ he explained. ‘It means “with” or “after”, or sometimes “beyond” – it’s from the Greek, you know.’

[Like all Permanent Secretaries, Sir Humphrey Appleby was a generalist. Most of them studied classics, history, PPE or modern languages. Of course you might expect the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Administrative Affairs to have a degree in business administration, but of course you would be wrong – Ed.]

Then he went on to explain that metadioxin means ‘with’ or ‘after’ dioxin, depending on whether it’s with the accusative or the genitive: with the accusative it’s ‘beyond’ or ‘after’, with the genitive it’s ‘with’ – as in Latin, where the ablative is used for words needing a sense of with to precede them.

Bernard added – speaking for the first time in the whole meeting – that of course there is no ablative in Greek, as I would doubtless recall.

I told him I recalled no such thing, and later today he wrote me a little memo, explaining all the above Greek and Latin grammar.

However, I hoped these explanations would satisfy Joan Littler. And that, like me, she would be unwilling to reveal the limits of her education. No such luck.

‘I still don’t understand,’ she said disarmingly.

Humphrey tried snobbery. ‘Oh dear,’ he sighed, ‘I should have thought that was perfectly clear.’ It never works.

Her eyes flashed. ‘What I insist on knowing,’ she stated, ‘is what is the actual difference between dioxin and metadioxin.’