So, Yes, Minister, that gentle satire on Westminster and Whitehall, is staging a comeback in the cynically foul-mouthed era of The Thick of It. Risky, but not quite as much as it sounds. Why not? Because writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn are not going head-to-head with Armando Iannucci's team on telly, but resurfacing on stage at the Chichester festival this summer.
Gentle, handsome Chichester seems the right place for Jim Hacker to return after an absence of 22 years. If the Telegraph's account is accurate – I'm sure it is – there will even be some topical jokes about MPs' expenses. Good. Jay and Lynn will twist the knife skilfully without spilling too much blood.
I've already expressed my view that The Thick of It is too heartless to make me laugh much, though I can see that it is often funny. It doesn't have a point of view either, unless you count nihilism. There are no good guys striving, however ineffectually, to do good. If Nick Griffin had it in him to be funny he could have written TTOI: they are all crooked, just in it for themselves.
Lynn (now 66) has been working in Tinseltown and doing all right. Jay (Sir Antony is 69), whom I suspect was the cerebral wing of the writing partnership, has always had a wider career. Hence the knighthood; he used to make the Queen's Christmas broadcast. Neither sounds like one of life's casualties, writing together again to pay the rent rather than to have a good time. Paul Eddington (Hacker) and Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey) are both dead, though Derek Fowlds (downtrodden aide Bernard Woolley) is happily still among us, albeit too old to play his former role.
It's interesting that Lynn and Jay see the world of politics today as having greater continuity with the past than the young often imagine. Special advisers, spin doctors, the eternal struggle between elected and unelected branches of government – some things don't change. "Our area of operation is the underlying conflicts and rivalries between elected representatives and permanent officials," Jay told the Telegraph. "The people who have the permanence have the power but the ones with the elected office have the theoretical authority. It's exactly the same as when we started at a profound level."
So the underlying gag remains as it was all those years ago, as it has been in the theatre for centuries, the servant who is cleverer than his master. Perhaps that's another reason why I was uncomfortable with The Thick of It: Malcolm Tucker is in charge and proud of it. Sir Humphrey would never make that indelicate mistake. He might be held responsible for something. And that would never do.
