Characters / Yes, Minister

The Rt. Hon James Hacker, MP, Ph.D (Honorary)

Played by: Paul Eddington; David Haig (2013)

A Birmingham-based Member of Parliament, who is appointed as the Minister for Administrative Affairs after his party wins a general election at the start of the series, and later becomes Prime Minister.

• The Alcoholic: He relies on alcohol far more than someone in such a prominent position really should, resulting in him suffering more than one embarrassing episode of public drunkenness during the run of the series. Not helping is that once he gets drunk, he gets drunk. And then there was that time he couldn't go without on a visit to a Muslim state, where alcohol is forbidden...
• Character Development: In Season 1 of Yes Minister he's idealistic to the point of naivety, only managing to get one unequivocal victory over Sir Humphrey in "Big Brother", thanks to a Crazy Enough to Work gambit on live television. Season 2 has him still a little on the idealistic side, but displaying more an interest in what he can personally get out of the job, including an honorary doctorate from Sir Humphrey's former college^note (Humphrey admittedly engineered this as part of a larger scheme to save the college from closure, but Hacker nonetheless seizes the opportunity with both hands). By Season 3 he's become a lot more politically savvy, and it eventually culminates in his blowing a comparatively minor European directive over the naming of UK sausages out of proportion into a national scandal, with his solving it cementing himself the Prime Minister's job.
• Dirty Coward: He often has shades of this; in many cases, the problem is something he could fight for, but he's afraid of losing votes if he does so. It's quite common among politicians in the series, to the point where something being described as 'courageous' is the most terrifying thing a politician can hear, even worse than "controversial".
  Sir Humphrey: "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes"; "courageous" means "this will lose you the election".
• Honor Before Reason: For all his Dirty Coward tendencies he can veer into this territory quite often, most notably in "The Moral Dimension" and "The Whiskey Priest", both of which have him nearly blowing the whistle on major scandals that would severely embarrass, if not bring down the government — and in the former case, would also have at the very least cost Bernard his job, and possibly even got him brought up on criminal charges for a well-intentioned but severe mistake.
• In Vino Veritas: A memorable sequence early on has him mention while heavily drunk that if he had his druthers, he'd send Humprey to prison.
  Jim: Instead I have to listen to him. Oh, gawd. On and on.
• Manipulative Bastard: By the time he becomes Prime Minister, he has had enough practice against Humphrey that he manages to pull it off on occasion.
• Meaningful Name: A hacker can mean a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity.
• Most Writers Are Writers: It's mentioned several times that he was a journalist and magazine editor before moving into politics.
• Napoleon Delusion: When he finds out that he's to be Prime Minister, his first reaction is silent incredulity, then fear, then awe, until finally he squares his jaw, sticks his hand inside his jacket and stares off heroically into the middle distance, as this trope. Not to mention Hacker's tendency to lapse into Churchill-like speeches, complete with intonation and accent, whenever contemplating the supposedly great works he's about to undertake.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: When he gets going, he starts lapsing... into... a Winston Churchill impression.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "The Writing on the Wall", he's dead set on a course of action that won't do anyone any favours, and won't be swayed. It's serious enough that Sir Humphrey even drops his incredibly elaborate Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and tells him "If you're going to do this damn silly thing, don't do it in this damn silly way." This stops Hacker in his tracks.
• Phony Degree: Has an honorary doctorate in law from Bailey College, Oxford, which Sir Humphrey arranged for him to get as a quid pro quo in exchange for using all the savings from the department budget cuts he'd been forcing the civil service to push through to subsidize his old college. He does have a real degree from London School of Economics but it is never stated what he studied and he only got a Third (which is a bare pass).
• Phrase Catcher: As the minister / Prime Minister, it is invariably him who is being addressed with the episode-closing Catchphrase Title Drop "Yes, (Prime) Minister."
• Promoted to Scapegoat:
  • In "The Bed of Nails", he is given the responsibility of formulating an integrated transport policy and the title of 'Transport Supremo'. He's quite pleased with what he sees as a promotion. Sir Humphrey immediately recognises this for the poisoned chalice that it is, and points out that this means that Hacker is now responsible for every transport screw-up in the country. The two of them join forces to find a way to force the PM to give the job to someone else without damaging the department's reputation.
  • In "The Writing on the Wall", when the DAA is threatened with closure, he is rumoured to be in line for receiving the job of Minister for Industrial Harmony— in other words, being responsible for strikes, which in 1970s Britain were frequent enough to be a spectator sport.
• Properly Paranoid: He's often convinced that the actions of anyone involved in government are part of some political plot against him personally. Probably because they almost always are.
  You'd be paranoid too if everyone was plotting against you.
• Puppet King: What Sir Humphrey and Sir Arnold were hoping to make him as PM, and by-and-large they sort of succeed.
• Slave to PR: He is obsessive about how the newspapers will document his every move, to the extent Sir Humphrey and Bernard make a bet (of one pound) whether the first thing he'll do on entering his office is ask what the papers have said about him. Bernard both wins and loses (Hacker had already asked, and then does it again anyway).
• Sleazy Politician: Averted! For all his attempts to win popularity in the most self-serving and underhanded ways imaginable - including weaselling his way into Number 10 - he comes off as more pathetic than despicable, and as Annie notes, he's a "whisky priest" who's still got his moral compass about him even as he tucks it away, grits his teeth, and ignores it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He begins the series as a careerist who wants to be in Cabinet, but he still has a strong idealistic streak and he wants to take firm stances on moral issues and policies that he agrees or disagrees with. Gradually, however, his fears and concerns with votes and his job become more his driving motivation, and by the time of the final season of Yes, Prime Minister he's stooped to undermining members of his own Cabinet and passing off their policies as his own, as well as suppressing news stories purely because they embarrass him and even lying about ever ordering such a thing, all the while insisting that it's just in the national interest because anything that is good for him is the national interest. In the first episode he is determined to uphold his Party's manifesto promise of Open Government, by the last episode he is bullying a civil servant into lying to protect Hacker's reputation after Hacker (unknowingly) lied to the House.
• Unexpected Successor: He ends up being this to the previous Prime Minister at the end of Yes Minister, as the Home Secretary, who was seen as the previous PM's heir apparent, ends up having his career ruined after a drunk-driving incident, and the other two likely candidates are seen as too radical by both Sir Humphrey (who thinks they'll try too hard to mess with the inner workings of the Civil Service) and the party's chief whip (who doesn't believe either of them to be capable of winning a general election).
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He starts out as this— and largely stays that way, though he does become a little more pragmatic and better able to work the system in his favour as the series goes on.
• Windbag Politician: Played with; he has a habit of giving self-aggrandizing speeches, and can also lapse into delivering a Wall of Blather when unable to answer difficult questions, but otherwise is far more direct and to the point than Sir Humphrey and Bernard generally are.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, GCB, KBE, MVO

Played by: Nigel Hawthorne; Henry Goodman (2013)

The Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, whose goal is to ensure that the Civil Service's agenda is advanced, and the government's agenda goes nowhere. He later gets appointed as the Cabinet Secretary upon the retirement of Sir Arnold Robinson, and goes on to do much the same job there.

• Almighty Janitor: Despite being anonymous to the population at large and describing himself as a "humble functionary", he is effectively running the country from behind the scenes by the end of the series.
  President of Buranda: I've always thought that Permanent Under-Secretary is such a demeaning title... makes you sound like an assistant typist or something, whereas you're really in charge of everything, aren't you?
• Badass Bureaucrat: He epitomizes this trope. He basically runs the Department of Administrative Affairs and has a huge influence on the British Government, whether working for his Minister or out-gambiting him as an adversary. He eventually rises to Cabinet Secretary where he is the bulk of the power behind the Hacker regime, including getting Hacker promoted to PM in the first place. All while being a "humble functionary". Sir Arnold, prior to retirement, also fits this.
• Bastard Understudy: As much as he's a devious, underhanded bastard of a bureaucrat, he is as nothing compared to Sir Arnold, who he goes to for advice.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: He frequently frames his actions as juggling the best interests of the country, which may not necessarily be voter-friendly, with the politically-motivated approaches that Hacker is inclined to take.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: Not often, but it can happen sometimes, such as the whole metadioxin debacle, where Sir Humphrey tries to flummox Hacker and a chemistry-illiterate MP despite it becoming apparent he has no knowledge of chemistry himself, merely parroting what vested interests have told him, and is therefore caught flat-footed when they start asking questions he can't answer like "what does inert mean?" or "what is a compound?"
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Early in the series he provides a rather peculiar example: Sir Humphrey explains how there are various different methods of trying to measure how well the government apparatus works, most of them frustratingly vague and subjective. He himself has settled on something easily quantifiable: how many people the government employs. The direct logical result of this is that in his view ever-expanding sprawling government bureaucracy, endless deliberation committees and new government departments are an unambiguously good thing as they increase the number of civil servants employed. A quick way to get him to support any proposal is to point out how it will require setting up a new department to handle it with many new positions to be filled.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He doesn't mind being called a moral vacuum. He takes it as a compliment.
• Character Development: In Yes Minister his default mood is affable mastery of the situation, periodically becoming irritated by what he perceives as Hacker's harebrained schemes (and once, in "The Skeleton in the Cupboard", displaying pants-wetting terror at the prospect of his Old Shame as a young civil servant being exposed). After his promotion to Cabinet Secretary, by Yes Prime Minister he's generally less jovial and complacent, and more bad-tempered.
• Control Freak: Tries to micromanage Hacker's every movement and decision. He gets very bent up when he manages to slip his net, and does something he's not supposed to.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: More just obstructive than actually out and out corrupt, but he's still a supporter of the nepotism and "Jobs for the Boys" system. He also helps support a bank in their construction efforts, and it just happens to be a coincidence they've already promised him a cushy job when he retires from the civil service.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Sir Arnold saves him from the death of his career and suspicion of being a Soviet spy by making him look like an incompetent prat.
• Enemy Mine: On very rare occasions, he and Hacker will work together.
• Everyone Has Standards: He may not mind being called a moral vacuum, but he's genuinely shocked, outraged and hurt when Hacker implicitely reveals to him that he's suspected of being a Soviet spy.
• Evil Mentor: "Evil" is too strong a word, but he's clearly trying to mould Bernard into his view of an ideal Civil Servant, that is to say amoral and unscrupulous.
• A Father to His Men: Played with; he's too impersonal to have any real friendships within the Civil Service (outside of Bernard, Sir Arnold, Sir Frederick, and a couple of others), but he'll staunchly defend any civil servant in danger of losing their job or otherwise having their career tarnished, just out of general principle.
• Gentleman Snarker: A surprisingly large amount of his dialogue fits this trope.
• Happily Married: Or least married to someone.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • His gambit in "Man Overboard" to get rid of the Employment Secretary in order to foil his plan to move half of the armed forces Oop North backfires spectacularly in the very last minute of the episode when Hacker decides that now that the Employment Secretary is gone, he can implement the plan anyway and take the credit for it himself. It's only then that Humphrey realises that he spent so much time engineering the Employment Secretary's downfall that he never bothered to discredit the actual plan, leaving him with no counter argument— and as Hacker unwittingly points out, he's actually strengthened several of the arguments for it without realizing.
  • In "The Key", he takes great delight in dressing down Bernard for allowing Hacker's election agent into No. 10 without a pass. Humphrey issues new orders that NO ONE gets through without a pass or an appointment. No One. (This is part of his broader scheme to limit access to the Prime Minister). This comes back to bite him towards the end of the episode when he is locked out of No. 10, desperately tries to get back in, and is refused entry by the policeman, who rigorously applies the rules on Bernard's instruction, despite Humphrey's protests.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Though with a pretty good justification— he is a civil servant, not a politician, and has therefore served many different governments in his time, each with different, changeable and conflicting agendas, and if he believed in all of them, he'd be a stark raving schizophrenic.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: While he's mostly an advocate for the Necessary Evil's in government, Humphrey also tends to roadblock any potential change that might threaten the status quo, preserving the power and influence enjoyed by the Civil Service and the "old boys club" they've cultivated, so he may continue to push for endeavors that upper-class, university educated individuals, like himself, prefer at the expense of the average Britain, which Hacker calls him out on whenever he has the chance.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The King of this, or if not there, somewhere nearby. Most of his aims are around stopping Hacker from implementing any of his policies in any way, shape or form. The rest are weaseling out of being made to implement those policies.
• Oh, Crap!: Nigel Hawthorne does such a remarkably good expression of sheer pants-destroying terror, often when exposed to Hacker's latest hare-brained idea, like reintroducting conscription or cancelling Trident.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He is astoundingly sexist, along with the rest of the civil service, dragging his feet and refusing to change their sexist policies, and when forced shift the goalposts so they don't have to. There's also his habit of condescendingly referring to any woman he meets with as "dear lady", which he gets called out on in Yes, Prime Minister.
• Rules Lawyer: Having spent a lifetime memorising obscure laws and bits of minutiae, he knows the quickest and simplest ways to point out how Hacker's various proposals would be impossible to implement.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He speaks in an overly long and complex fashion in order to flummox his political masters and thus maintain the Civil Service status quo— however, he's so used to speaking in such a fashion that at times he appears almost incapable of speaking clearly, even when he genuinely wants to make himself clearly understood. At very least, he's reluctant to do so, to an almost instinctive degree; a short answer could generally be dragged out of him and usually formed the punchline to a joke. For instance, here's how Humphrey confesses his sins:
  Sir Humphrey Appleby: The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.
  James Hacker: I beg your pardon?
  Sir Humphrey Appleby: It was... I.
  • One time, Humphrey also stops speaking this way to show that he is dead serious, telling an absolutely, unbendably resolute Hacker, dead-set on a course of action that will help absolutely no-one, that "if you insist on doing this damn silly thing, don't do it in this damn silly way."
  • In the Hacker Diaries, the fictional diaries of Jim Hacker and novelization of the series, it is stated that he lived out the last of his days in a home for the elderly deranged when "advancing years, without in any way impairing his verbal fluency, disengaged the operation of his mind from the content of his speech."
• The Unfettered: He is, as Hacker puts it, a "moral vacuum", and freely admits that he is unconcerned with anything but the continued operation of the government and its policies, whoever and whatever they may be.
• Wall of Blather: Frequently employs this when dealing with Hacker (and with select committees), so as to obfuscate whatever's actually going on, then when Hacker angrily demands to know why he wasn't told about something, Sir Humphrey will of course point out that he did tell Hacker.
• Wicked Cultured: If one thinks him wicked. Certainly he is enough of an antagonist-figure to rule out his being a Gentleman and a Scholar.

Bernard Woolley

Played by: Derek Fowlds; Chris Larkin (2013)

Hacker's Private Secretary in the Department of Administrative Affairs, and later as Prime Minister.

• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: He becomes this frequently, either because of his troubles in balancing out the wishes of his two superiors or having to deal with the more mundane but equally tedious elements of a Vast Bureaucracy.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Often inflicts it, feeling the need to correct Hacker or Sir Humphrey on some metaphor they've made, often earning him a Death Glare in response.
• Character Development: In Yes Minister he's generally rather unworldly and naïve, and is prone to coming out with remarks that make Humphrey doubt whether or not he's really a "high-flyer". By Yes Prime Minister he's more experienced and more crafty. Of course, this is Bernard we're talking about, so it's relative, but Humphrey no longer doubts his ability to his face—perhaps because he's more often at odds with Bernard, and can't afford to alienate him.
• Conflicting Loyalty: He's often torn between obedience to Hacker, who is his immediate superior, and Sir Humphrey, who is his master, and might as well be as unto God to him.
  Hacker: Let me make one thing clear: Sir Humphrey is not God, okay?
  Bernard: [pause] Will you tell him, or shall I?
• Could Say It, But...: Often discusses matters in hypothetical or indirect terms when leaking the Minister's plans to Sir Humphrey as a way of getting around the fact that he's supposed to be keeping such information confidential. Only for Humphrey to firmly state "Thank you, Bernard" the moment he's leaked enough details for Humphrey to figure out what Hacker is up to.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's not incapable of making sarcastic quips, should the need arise.
• Literal-Minded: Which leads into aforementioned trauma.
• Lovable Coward: Sometimes, on full display in "The Key", where he lets Humphrey into a private meeting after explicitly being told not to. His defence? "He's bigger than me."
• Meaningful Name: Woolley is a homonym of woolly, meaning confused or unclear.
• Plucky Comic Relief: To a certain degree, a very slight degree as he was more than just the comic relief. Often seemed to have the funny thing to say at the least appropriate times as well as his acting out of animals or to visually show Hacker why his metaphors were wrong (see this clip "The Challenge", in this case it was actually Sir Humphrey). Often found puncturing a hole in tension you could cut with a knife.
• Phrase Catcher: "Thank you, Bernard." Spoken whenever Bernard's pedantic quibbling on some subject has gotten too far on either Humphrey's or Hacker's nerves.
• Token Good Teammate: Not that the civil service is entirely lacking in "good" people, but he's the civil servant who's most consistently helpful towards Hacker. That being said, his goal seems to be to help Hacker and Sir Humphrey work together well, as he'll also side with Sir Humphrey given the situation.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His getting hold of a forged valuation certificate to help Annie keep hold of a rosewater jar gifted to her at a diplomatic function ends up kickstarting a major scandal, which Hacker is only just barely able to hold off — and even then, only because Sir Humphrey used Hacker's own actions in setting up the "communications room" to prevent him from throwing Bernard to the wolves.
• Wall of Blather:
  • He occasionally goes into this when explaining policies, though unlike Sir Humphrey, he doesn't use it as an obfuscation tactic so much as he's genuinely trying to inform Hacker of pertinent information, but just doesn't know when to stop. Either that or he's nervous.
    Hacker: You're bluthering, Bernard.
    Bernard: Yes, minister.
    Hacker: Why are you bluthering, Bernard?
    Bernard: It's my job, minister.
  • In "The Bed of Nails", he goes into an absurdly long discussion about the origins of the phrase "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts". Hacker and Sir Humphrey, who were actually talking about public transport policies before Bernard derailed the discussion, just stare at him in disbelief for a few moments before going back to what they were discussing beforehand.
• The Watson: Sir Humphrey is often obliged to explain to him how things really work in the civil service. Hacker also frequently has to explain to him how things work from the political side of things. In other instances, Bernard has to explain to Hacker how things really work — often in order to help Hacker attempt to win the day.

Annie Hacker

Played by: Diana Hoddinott

Hacker's wife.

• Deadpan Snarker: She frequently undercuts his pomposity and pretensions with well-timed sarcasm.
• The Smurfette Principle: She was the only female recurring character from Yes Minister, and one of two female recurring characters (the other being Dorothy Wainwright) from Yes Prime Minister.
• Women Are Wiser: Played with; she's a lot more down to Earth and has a much clearer moral compass than her husband, but she lacks his political nous, meaning that a lot of things that she suggests end up not being practical to implement in reality.

Sir Arnold Robinson, GCMG, KBE

Played by: John Nettleton

The cabinet secretary during Yes Minister. He retires at the end of that series, but still makes occasional appearances during Yes Prime Minister.

• Age Lift: Sir Arnold is implied to be a good deal older and more experienced than Humphrey, but his actor John Nettleton is actually only a couple of months older than Nigel Hawthorne. This makes for cognitive dissonance when Nettleton shows up in making-of documentaries decades later, looking barely older than he did when he was in the show.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: When Sir Humphrey is revealed to have failed to spot that a former government minister was secretly a KGB agent, he angrily protests that Sir Arnold told him to find said minister innocent, but Sir Arnold sternly denies having any recollection of this. He correctly points out that neither he nor Humphrey has any material evidence of the instructions that the latter was given, but it's clear that he has no intention of Taking the Bullet for Humphrey's sake.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Not out-and-out evil, mind (well... probably), but he is a stone-cold bureaucrat who wields power and influence Sir Humphrey could only dream of, and has glasses.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The one to whom all the others look to for advice, and if at all possible, assistance.
• The Stoic: He can be a Deadpan Snarker at times, but for the most part he's extremely cold, calculating, and deadly serious.

Frank Weisel

Played by: Neil Fitzwilliam

Hacker's political adviser during the first season of Yes Minister.

• Ironic Name: While his surname might imply that he's weaselly and untrustworthy, he actually turns out to have quite a strong sense of morality, ultimately culminating in his resigning and threatening to ruin Hacker's career by blowing open a scandal that the minister and Sir Humphrey agreed to cover up, forcing them to kick him upstairs by persuading him to take charge of a Quango dedicated to reforming the system of governmental organizations.
• Malicious Misnaming: He's frequently on the receiving end of this from Sir Humphrey (and, to a lesser extent, Annie and Bernard), being referred to as "Mr. Weasel" despite his surname actually being pronounced "Why-sal".
• Put on a Bus: Due to the writers finding that most of the things he did in the plot could be reassigned to Bernard or Annie without any real difficulty, Frank was written out at the end of the first season by being put in charge of a Quango.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • Sir Humphrey tries to do this to him in the pilot episode, by putting him in an office block in Walthamstow, eight miles away from the ministry. Hacker doesn't let it fly, though.
  • When it looks like he's going to make a stink about how Sir Humphrey and Hacker are going to save a government industry partner by bribing a banker with a Quango directorship to bail said partner out, they get rid of him by transferring him to run a Quango to investigate Quangos, after which he is never seen again.

The Prime Minister

Played by: N/A

The Prime Minister during Yes Minister, whose retirement ends up bringing about Hacker's own ascension to the top job.

• Bad Boss: It's stated in the series and especially the books that he and Hacker had a somewhat adversarial relationship (Hacker having run a rival contender's in-party campaign for nomination as Prime Minister – and while they lost to the PM, he still holds a grudge). Indeed, it's stated that the reason Hacker was appointed to the Department of Administrative Affairs when he'd been the Shadow Agriculture Minister for seven years was because the DAA was considered an unglamorous political graveyard. (That, and the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture had begged not to have him – he'd have known too much!) Indeed early in the series the PM comes close to abolishing the entire department – and by extension Hacker's career – altogether. However there is a turning point in their relationship where the PM becomes slightly more of a Benevolent Boss.
• Bus Crash: He suddenly dies from a heart attack before he can finish his memoirs — and the timing works out quite well for Hacker, as it's implied that the final chapter of said memoirs would have blown the whistle on Hacker's ascending to power by engineering the "Eurosausage" scandal.
• The Ghost: Never actually appears on-screen at any point, nor is his voice heard. Heck, we never even find out his name!
• Invisible President: You never see him or even learn his name until Hacker himself gets the job.
• Put on a Bus: He retires in the final episode of Yes Minister, setting up Hacker's ascension to the top job — albeit The Bus Came Back for a couple of episodes of Yes Prime Minister.
• The Rival: Hacker was the campaign manager for one of his rivals (it's never specified who), and apparently there's something of an enmity between the two men. Nothing major, but enough that Hacker ended up at the Department of Administrative Affairs rather than getting a more prestigious posting.

Vic Gould

Played by: Edward Jewesbury

The government Chief Whip for most of Yes Minister.

• Demoted to Extra: He was originally intended to be a regular character, as evidenced by Jewesbury being listed among the main cast in the pilot episode's title sequence. However, the creators couldn't think of anything for Gould to do in future episodes other than just yell at Hacker for making mistakes and/or not managing to get the government's policies past Sir Humphrey, meaning he only made one more appearance, in the third-to-last Yes Minister episode.
• The Dreaded: Hacker visibly fears him, and describes him to Annie as a "terrorist". Sir Humphrey and Bernard exploit this to prevent Hacker from blowing the whistle on an arms-trading deal that would severely embarrass and perhaps bring down the government.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: May be one to Michael Cocks, the Chief Whip of the Labour Party at the time the series was written.
• Put on a Bus: He no longer occupies the Chief Whip's position in the final episode of "Yes Minister", and is replaced by an MP called Jeffrey, played by James Grout.

Sir Frederick "Jumbo" Stewart

Played by: John Savident

A high-ranking civil servant, the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

• Large and in Charge: He's the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one of the most presigious posts. He's also very rotund, which ends up causing problems during a hastily-convened meeting in Hacker's room on an InterCity Sleeper (which, for perspective, have rooms barely any larger than the average home's bathroom).
• Manipulative Bastard: He does his share of string-pulling. Even Sir Humphrey is hard-pressed to keep up.
• Spotting the Thread: In "The Official Visit", he's the one who works out that if President Mohammed really did intend to deliver an inflammatory speech encouraging Scotland and Northern Ireland to secede from the United Kingdom, he probably wouldn't have sent the UK government a copy of it beforehand, and that he likely has some other motive.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Because John Nettleton wasn't available for the rest of the first season after the pilot episode, Jumbo took over the role originally intended for Sir Arnold to take. Season 2 saw Sir Arnold return as a recurring cast member, ironically this time because it was Savident who was unavailable.

Sir Desmond Glazebrook

Played by: Richard Vernon

The chairman of Bartlett's Bank, and a close friend of Sir Humphrey, who eventually rises to become Governor of the Bank of England by the end of Yes Prime Minister.

• Cliché Storm: Tends to speak in these whenever he's asked any difficult questions, to the point where even Hacker, someone who also uses this tactic, calls him out on it.
• The Ditz: Freely admits that not only does he not understand the workings of the banking industry, but he can't even comprehend most of what's written in The Financial Times, and only buys it because it's "part of the uniform". Freely admits to Humphrey in his first appearance he doesn't know anything, despite which he expects to be appointed to a Quango.
• Flanderization: He seems like a fairly sensible financier—if a bit baffled by Sir Humphrey's antics during a lunch meeting—in his first appearance. The next time he appears he's become a Cloudcuckoolander. Of course, due to his age he may have gone senile.

Dorothy Wainwright

Played by: Deborah Norton

Hacker's political advisor after he becomes Prime Minister.

• The Dreaded: To just about every senior civil servant out there, as she has a habit of effortlessly dismantling anything they tell the Prime Minister.
• Good Counterpart: To Sir Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister. Her intervention mostly serves to change the power balance of the show by having Hacker more readily willing to rein in Sir Humphrey.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: She's probably the most intelligent and competent person in the entire series. Not one character ever directly gets the better of her, she utterly tears apart any civil servant who tries to pull the wool over her eyes, and her ideas for civil service reform are both sensible and perfectly workable, with Humphrey only managing to stop them by going behind her back, recommending an alternate plan to Hacker, and duping him into not telling Dorothy about it.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: In her first episode, it turns out that the reason she hadn't shown up in the previous episodes of the season is because Humphrey had successfully pulled on her what he had tried to do to Weisel in the series pilot, moving her office to an out of the way nook where she wouldn't have access to the PM. At the end of the episode Humphrey is forced to give her back her old office in exchange for the restrictions on access to the PM he accidentally placed on himself being lifted as well.
• Remember the New Guy?: A mild case; dialogue implies that she was also political advisor to the previous PM and was inherited by Hacker when he took over, and that she was feared by senior civil servants in every department. Given that Hacker had his hands full dealing with Sir Humphrey and his own former department, however, it's understandable that he wouldn't know all that much about her.

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