Who said it: Dominic Cummings or Nathan Barley?

Dominic Cummings as Dominic Cummings, left, and Nicholas Burns as Nathan Barley. Composite: EPA/Andy Rain/Channel 4

One is prone to spouting wonkish technobabble full of long words, dresses like he fell through a wardrobe backwards and had random items stick to him, and is looking for assorted weirdos and misfits with odd skills. The other is a fictional character from a 2000s Channel 4 sitcom. But who said it – the senior No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings, or Nathan Barley?

No prizes, just for fun. Let us know how you get on in the comments …

Who said it: Dominic Cummings or Nathan Barley?

1. "Most ideas that seem bad are bad but great ideas also seem at first like bad ideas."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

2. "I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit – don’t complain later because I made it clear now. "

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

3. "OK, here's the credos."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

4. "I want a real special coffee today, yeah. Triple size, four shots in it, and the best foam you've ever squirted from your milky pumps."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

5. "It is all upside, there’s no downside if you don’t mind a bit of noise and it’s a fast cheap way to find good ideas."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

6. "We need some true wild cards, artists … weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

7. "It's an online urban culture dispatch."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

8. "The influence of grotesque incompetents provided an opportunity for extreme leverage."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

9. "The horrors of ‘human resources’ (which also obviously need a bonfire)."

   1. 

      Dominic

   2. 

      Nathan

10. "I'm a self-facilitating media node."

    1. 

       Dominic

    2. 

       Nathan

11. "It’s a bonus if you can code but it isn’t necessary."

    1. 

       Dominic

    2. 

       Nathan

12. "The most obvious example of a project like this I can think of is a manned international lunar base."

    1. 

       Dominic

    2. 

       Nathan

13. "By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for."

    1. 

       Dominic

    2. 

       Nathan

14. "The idiots are winning."

    1. 

       Dominic

    2. 

       Nathan

Solutions

1:A - Always good to get your excuses in early, Dom, 2:A - Job security is not a big feature of the roles that Cummings is promising, 3:B - Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris spawned about 1,057 new sayings during the series, all of which you could just about imagine Jennifer Arcuri and her mates uttering for real in London's Tech City just a few years later, 4:B - This was Nathan, but given that Dominic is asking for "a sort of personal assistant … this will involve a mix of very interesting work and lots of uninteresting trivia that makes my life easier which you won’t enjoy. You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends – frankly it will be hard having a boy/girlfriend at all," you can imagine him barking out that order at 11pm, 5:A - Cummings' view of his own blogposts there, 6:A - Not Nathan Barley. It's a government job ad. We know. We know, 7:B - Nathan, not Dominic discovering that gov.uk is trying to be trendy again, 8:A - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, 9:A - Workers' rights are guaranteed by this government though, apparently, 10:B - The definitive Barley line, 11:A - Actually this is a great hiring point – even if you don't need to code yourself, being able to have a rough idea about what is possible with code and how difficult it is might be is a useful skill, 12:A - Cummings argues on his blog that nations cooperating on a lunar base will reduce the risk of international war and force the bootstrapping of new international institutions, although it could also possibly increase the risk of a moonbase being invaded by Cybermen, 13:A - Solid strategy, mate, 14:B - Well, it wasn't *actually* Nathan who said that in the series. It was Julian Barratt's character Dan who did. But there you go. We all know how he feels

Scores

1. 9 and above.

   Well plastic

2. 6 and above.

   Keep it chopped out, yeah?

3. 3 and above.

   Keep it dusty

4. 0 and above.

   Well futile

5. 12 and above.

   That is well jackson