Yes, Prime Minister (TV Series)

The Smoke Screen (1986)

Nigel Hawthorne: Sir Humphrey Appleby

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Sir Humphrey : Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

  Jim Hacker : Perhaps I can have a précis of that?

• Jim Hacker : It says here, smoking related diseases cost the National Health Service £165 million a year.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes but we've been in to that, it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than it did in medical treatment. So, financially speaking it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at their present rate.

• Sir Humphrey Appleby : All the hospitality that we've enjoyed at BTG's expense. Champagne receptions, buffet lunches, the best seats at sporting and cultural events.

  Jim Hacker : What's the problem?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : The tobacco companies may release this embarrassing information to the press.

  Jim Hacker : It's not embarrassing. I've had drinks at the Soviet embassy. That doesn't make me a Russian spy.

• Jim Hacker : We're talking of 100,000 deaths a year.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes, but cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health service. We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.

  Jim Hacker : So long as they live.

• Sir Humphrey Appleby : [discussing how to stop the PM's anti-smoking legislation]  I think the crucial argument is that we are living in a free country and we *must* be free to make our own decisions. After all, government shouldn't be a nursemaid, we don't want the nanny state.

  Sir Frank Gordon : Oh, that's very good.

  Sir Ian Whitworth : Excellent.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : The only problem is that that is also the argument for legalising the sale of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, arsenic and gelignite.

  Sir Frank Gordon : Well maybe that's a good idea if we can put a big enough tax on them.

  Sir Ian Whitworth : Politically difficult.

  Sir Frank Gordon : Pity.

• Sir Frank Gordon : But let's be clear about this, Humphrey. The entire system hinges on you as Cabinet Secretary controlling the PM and on me as Permanent Secretary at the Treasury controlling the Chancellor. Right?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Right.

  Sir Frank Gordon : And on both of us keeping an agreeable tension between them, mistrust, hostility.

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Mind you, I think they'd manage that all right even without us. The Chancellor will never forgive the Prime Minister for beating him to Number 10 and the Prime Minister will never trust the Chancellor. After all, one never trusts anyone one has deceived.

• Sir Humphrey Appleby : A lot of people, eminent people, influential people have argued that such legislation would be a blow against freedom of choice.

  Jim Hacker : Rubbish. I'm not banning smoking itself. Does every tax rise represent a blow against freedom?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Well, depends how big the tax rise is.

  Jim Hacker : Oh, that's fascinating. Does twenty pence represent a blow against freedom?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : Prime Minister...

  Jim Hacker : Twenty-five pence? Thirty pence? Thirty-one? Is something a blow against freedom simply because it can seriously damage your wealth?

• Sir Humphrey Appleby : I foresee all sorts of of unforeseen problems.

  Jim Hacker : Such as?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : If I could foresee them, they wouldn't be unforeseen.

• Gerald - Chairman British Tobacco Group : He hasn't got much clout in Whitehall, has he?

  Sir Humphrey Appleby : None at all. He's just a minister.