The Complete Yes Minister

So I sat here and read the communiqué which was full of the usual guff about bonds between our two countries, common interests, frank and useful conversations and all that crap. Humphrey was reading the FT.² I was wondering what we would do if the talks were so far removed from what it says in the communiqué that we couldn’t sign it. Suppose there were to be a diplomatic incident at the reception. I’d have to contact London somehow. I’d need some way of directly communicating with the Foreign Secretary, for instance, or even the PM.

And then the idea flashed into my mind.

‘Humphrey,’ I suggested tentatively, ‘can’t we set up a security communications room next door to the reception? At the Sheikh’s Palace, I mean? With emergency telephones and Telex lines to Downing Street. Then we could fill it with cases of booze that we’ll smuggle in from the Embassy. We could liven up our orange juice and nobody would ever know.’

He gazed at me in astonishment. ‘Minister!’

I was about to apologise for going too far, when he went on, ‘That is a stroke of genius.’

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.