Humphrey Appleby

Character[edit]

Sir Humphrey is a master of obfuscation and manipulation, often making long-winded statements to confuse and fatigue the listener. An example is the following monologue from the episode "The Death List": "In view of the somewhat nebulous and inexplicit nature of your remit, and the arguably marginal and peripheral nature of your influence within the central deliberations and decisions within the political process, there could be a case for restructuring their action priorities in such a way as to eliminate your liquidation from their immediate agenda."^[8] Addressing his Minister, he means to suggest by this that a terrorist group which had previously conspired to assassinate the Minister is no longer planning to do so, as they believe he is simply not important enough politically.


While outwardly conservative, Sir Humphrey will stop at nothing to prevent even positive changes to his department. He will both feign sympathy and strike alliances even with the far left in order to maintain the existing status quo in his own career and for the Civil Service bureaucracy in particular. He is even once heard singing, "We shall not be moved", to himself when unleashing a rabid left-wing labour union leader against his Minister's plans for replacing the civil servants filling out red tape all day in a London hospital with no actual doctors, nurses, and patients.


After decades of working in a bureaucracy, Sir Humphrey knows how to baffle his opponents with legalese and routinely employs what his previous Minister calls "creative inertia" (meaning a dizzying array of sociopathic blocking and delaying tactics). He often conceals vital documents underneath mammoth piles of papers and reports, strategically appoints allies to supposedly impartial boards, or offers to set up an interdepartmental committee to indefinitely block his Minister's proposals, and occasionally outright lying. Throughout the series, he serves as Permanent Secretary at the Department of Administrative Affairs, with Jim Hacker as minister; he is appointed Cabinet Secretary shortly before Hacker's elevation to the role of Prime Minister, which he was instrumental in bringing to pass.


Sir Humphrey frequently uses both his mastery of the English language and even his superb grasp of Latin and Classical Greek grammar to perplex his political masters and to obscure relevant issues under discussion. However, his habit of using language as a tool of confusion and obstruction is so deeply ingrained that he is sometimes unable to speak clearly and directly even when he honestly wishes to be clearly understood. He genuinely believes that the Civil Service knows what the average person needs and is the most qualified body to run the country. The joke being, however, that Sir Humphrey, as an elite, University of Oxford-educated career civil servant, is actually quite out of touch from the average Briton.


His minister Jim Hacker, on the other hand, tends to regard what is best for Britain as being whatever is best at the moment for his political party or his own chances of re-election. As a result, Sir Humphrey and Hacker often clash.


Sir Humphrey still holds women to be the fairer sex and is thus overly courteous, frequently addressing them as "dear lady", while expressing contempt for female civil servants behind their backs and blocking their chances of promotion at every turn. Like Hacker, Sir Humphrey has expensive tastes, and is regularly seen drinking sherry and dining at gourmet restaurants, often with his fellow civil servant Sir Arnold Robinson, who was Cabinet Secretary throughout Yes Minister. Sir Humphrey is also on the board of governors of the National Theatre and attends many of the gala nights of the Royal Opera House. His interests also extend to cricket, theatre, classical music, and the arts.


Humphrey is usually smooth, calm and collected within his element of manipulating both bureaucracy and procedure, but has become so adept at working within and maintaining the system of government that, whenever anything unexpected is sprung on him, whether it be Hacker ordering him to negotiate with a councillor who wishes to overthrow the monarchy, or honours in his department being made dependent on meritocracy, Humphrey immediately crumbles, on a few occasions being reduced to stuttering out garbled platitudes such as "the thin end of the wedge", "the beginning of the end", or "it cuts at the very roots", although he usually regains his composure pretty quickly to try and push his own opposition to the plans back on track.


In a Radio Times interview to promote the first series of Yes, Prime Minister, Nigel Hawthorne observed, "He's raving mad of course. Obsessive about his job. He'd do anything to keep control. In fact, he does go mad in one episode. Quite mad."^[9]