“Well,’said Ernest, ‘by some strange coincidence I know this story.’Boddichek was not good at irony. ‘I knew that there was that possibility,’ he said, ‘but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it before taking a meeti”

“So what's the problem?’‘No problem. There's no problem. Don't ever say what's the problem, nthat's the negative way of looking at things, you know like is the bottle half empty or half full, know what I mean, every problem is also an opportunity, the question here is what opportunity does this present us with?’‘It seems to me’, said Ernest stubbornly, ‘that this opportunity presents us with a problem. Is there a director that Virginia would like?”

“Well,’said Ernest, ‘by some strange coincidence I know this story.’Boddichek was not good at irony. ‘I knew that there was that possibility,’ he said, ‘but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it before taking a meeti”

“I went on to explain that it is an honour, and also that we need a transport policy."If by 'we' you mean Britain, that's perfectly true," he acknowledged. "But if by 'we' you mean you and me and this Department, we need a transport policy like an aperture in the cranial cavity.”

“Clarification is not to clarify things. It is to put one’s self in the clear (Sir Humphrey Appleby)”

“Humphrey Not another czar, please, Prime Minister. In the last three years we’ve appointed an Enterprise Czar, a Youth-Crime Czar, a Welfare Supremo, a Pre-School Supremo, an Unemployment Watchdog, a Banking Regulator, a Science and Technology Supremo and a Community Policing Czar. If you go on like this you won’t need a Cabinet. Jim Perfect! Humphrey Perfect? Prime Minister, we even have a Twitter Czar! Bernard His appointment was announced as a Tweet. Humphrey What’s he supposed to achieve? Jim The same as the others: at least twelve column inches in every paper.”

“Humphrey Well, Prime Minister … one hesitates to say this but there are times when circumstances conspire to create an inauspicious concatenation of events that necessitate a metamorphosis, as it were, of the situation such that what happened in the first instance to be of primary import fraught with hazard and menace can be relegated to a secondary or indeed tertiary position while a new and hitherto unforeseen or unappreciated element can and indeed should be introduced to support and supersede those prior concerns not by confronting them but by subordinating them to the over-arching imperatives and increased urgency of the previously unrealised predicament which may in fact now, ceteris paribus, only be susceptible to radical and remedial action such that you might feel forced to consider the currently intractable position in which you find yourself. Jim is nonplussed. Jim What does he mean, Bernard? Bernard I, um – I, er, think that he’s perhaps suggesting the possibility that you, um, consider your position. Resign, in fact, Prime Minister.”

“Jim Is there no other way? Claire We could just say no to him. Jim Can’t risk that. Collapse of conference, collapse of backbench support, collapse of Cabinet. Collapse of my career. The biggest disaster since Dunkirk. Humphrey I think not, Prime Minister. Jim Name a bigger one. Humphrey The Freedom of Information Act.”