Sad news, the last of the Yes Minister trio has died. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51147182 I can't say I watched anything else with him in, certainly not Heartbeat and his time on Basil Brush was a bit before my time. His performance in Yes, [Prime] Minister was superb as the middle man between Sir Humphrey and Jim Hacker.
RIP. My two favourite Bernard Woolley quotes doing the rounds on Twitter: "Well, under consideration means we've lost the file; under active consideration means we're trying to find it." Bernard: “Of course, in the service, CMG stands for Call Me God. And KCMG for Kindly Call Me God.” Hacker: “What about GCMG?” Bernard: “God Calls Me God.”
Oh this is sad news. I liked Basil Brush,being a child at the time and Yes Minister/ Prime Minister was sublime. RIP.
I'm sorry to hear the old boy croaked, but I would just like to raise a voice of dissent regarding Yes Minister/Prime minister inasmuch as I found it to be smug, cosy and achingly middle class. Terry and June do politics. Chortles down the Avenue. Comedy for the mail reader.
1970s Basil Brush was some of the greatest comedy of all time IMO. I should note that I haven’t revisited it so this is a somewhat nostalgic view.
It's far from smug, cosy or middle class. It's a very accurate depiction of the machinery of power and the civil service. Politicians of all hues and civil servants have said this on multiple occasions. It's even be used in political science classes. And of the two writers one was of a left wing persuasion the other right wing. The wordplay is deft and superbly written and timeless and superbly acted. It is a comedy series par excellence. It's a shame Clive you have to bring your own class prejudice to bear rather than treating it on a different view on the basis of appeal to the intellect. Next you will be claiming I Claudius and Monty Python's Flying Circus are the same. Two more of the highest points of the BBC's entire output. Your viewpoint is reminiscent of those former Communist regimes that loved to stamp on the intellectuals and try and force everyone to conform to a sterile ideal of what constitutes entertainment and art. Or promote the works of inferior writers and composers because their parents were from the lowest 'class' while deriding the works of those whose parents were from an educated background. Ironically after 1917 in Russia there was a flowering under enlightened commissars that allowed the arts to flourish in a progressive often radical but stimulating way before the jackboot descended. Ditto for the Nazis in post Weimar.
Surely one of the reasons it might seem middle class is that senior civil servants and politicians are, themselves, middle class?
Actually not as wacky as the 'truth'. The stories I could tell having once been a Bernard type character myself.
