Yes, Prime Minister (TV Series)

The Tangled Web (1988)

Paul Eddington: James Hacker

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Quotes 

• James Hacker : Honesty always gives you the advantage of surprise in the House of Commons.

• James Hacker : But it wasn't my fault. I didn't know he was being bugged.

  Bernard Woolley : Prime Minister, you are deemed to have known. You are ultimately responsible.

  James Hacker : Why wasn't I told?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : The Home Secretary might not have felt the need to infrom you.

  James Hacker : Why?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Perhaps he didn't know either. Or perhaps he'd been advised that you did not need to know.

  James Hacker : Well I did need to know.

  Bernard Woolley : Apparently the fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know was known, and therefore those that needed to advise and inform the Home Secretary perhaps felt that the information that he needed as to whether to inform the highest authority of the known information was not yet known and therefore there was no authority for the authority to be informed because the need to know was not at this time known or needed.

  James Hacker : What!

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : We could not know that you would deny it in the House.

  James Hacker : Well, obviously I would if I didn't know and I were asked.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : We did not know that you would be asked when you didn't know.

  James Hacker : But I was bound to be asked when I didn't know if I didn't know.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : What?

• [discussing Sir Humphrey's upcoming interview with Ludovic Kennedy] 

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : His researchers mentioned that lots of people are interested to know why so much power is centralised in my hands.

  James Hacker : Lots of people? Hardly anybody's ever heard of you, Humphrey.

  Bernard Woolley : Perhaps they meant lots of Radio 3 listeners.

  James Hacker : That's a contradiction in terms.

• Sir Humphrey Appleby : We can issue a clarification.

  James Hacker : I think you've already made yourself very clear.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : No, Prime Minister, a clarification is not to make oneself clear. It is to put oneself *in* the clear.

• James Hacker : I mean, why should we bug Hugh Halifax's telephone? I mean, one of my own administration. Don't know where they got such a daft idea. Sheer paranoia.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes, the only thing is...

  James Hacker : I mean, why should we listen in to MPs? Boring, stupid ignorant windbags, I do my best *not* to listen to them. He's only a PPS. *I* have enough trouble finding out what's going on at the Ministry of Defence, what could *he* know?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : So I gather you denied that Mr Halifax's phone had been bugged.

  James Hacker : Well, obviously. It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes. Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.

  James Hacker : Epistemological? What are you talking about?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : You told a lie.

• James Hacker : It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes. Unfortunately although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the 4th of the epithets you applied to the statement, in as much as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts, in so far as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.

  James Hacker : What are you talking about?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : You... told a lie.

• Bernard Woolley : You mean somebody needs to know, but now that you know, Sir Humphrey doesn't need to know. But you need to know Sir Humphrey doesn't know, but he doesn't need to know, or that you know he doesn't need to know.

  James Hacker : Thank you, I couldn't have put it less clearly myself.