"Ah!" That exact moment that Sir Frank goes from faintly praising Sir Humphrey, to throwing Humpy under the bus.

@DCdabest

6 жыл бұрын

Bond8789 Peter Ceilier as Sir Frank is one of the best supporting acts in this show. Just goes to show how many other sharks there are in the tank.

@richardlloyd2589

4 жыл бұрын

Frank’s little finger-wiggle as Humphrey sticks his head round the door......🤣 Edit- just watched it and realised I’m remembering the full episode, or even the next episode.

@uncommon_name9337

2 жыл бұрын

I think it was at the "Oooh"

@georgepearce5844

2 жыл бұрын

For me, this is the most superb, polished, exquisite fragment from all the episodes. Aside from the script, it is Cellier's acting which is so distinguished - the posture, facial expressions, head movement, use of "ah" when he realises he has to change gear. A performance to treasure. George Pearce Aug 2021

@kreb7

2 жыл бұрын

BUS looks like a freight train he throw him under.

These word salads from Humphrey, Bernard, and now Frank, are a gag that somehow never stops being funny.

I love that they wrote these types of speeches to make perfect sense if you listen carefully. It would have been so much easier for the script writers to just make them utter gibberish, but in typical British comedic fashion, they went that extra mile.

@yonisali3879

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah it's the extra details that look showy but when looked more closely you see that it goes the extra mile because it takes the viewers intelligence into consideration on every layer

@ahcokris

5 жыл бұрын

yes, he does convey a rather longwinded and convoluted meaning, does he not? I mean I never learned to speak like that.

@anonUK

4 жыл бұрын

If they had been total gibberish, then it wouldn't have been satirical, or very lazy satire. The point of the series was that senior civil servants used their knowledge to blind ministers with science and get their way irrespective of whatever ministers said and whatever rosette they wore at election time. If you look on KZread for "the Rhodesia solution", you see that their approach to gaining political advantage isn't by actually hiding things from ministers (which could be politically or legally risky if proven) but by explaining them in such a way that they couldn't be understood fully until it was too late to do anything about it.

@warnpassion

4 жыл бұрын

lancer D That is what is called as intelligent comedy.

@billyakira8439

4 жыл бұрын

The truth is its quite close to how the civil service spoke and still speak to this day, and as a brit I still can't keep up with it

Sir Frank was underused in the series. Wish we'd seen more of him.

@rewrose2838

2 жыл бұрын

I'd say the same about Mr Weasel 😁 great guy

@artiteam1395

Жыл бұрын

Actually everyone is brilliant!

@mistersir3020

Жыл бұрын

@@rewrose2838 Mr. Wisel

@Blackcomanche

Жыл бұрын

​@@rewrose2838 Frank Weisel was written out of the show.

@rewrose2838

Жыл бұрын

@@Blackcomanche How very unfortunate

should have got a bafta just for "ah" and the accompanying facial expression.

Sir Frank Gordon: "Ah, when I say 'not overstretched', I was of course talking in a sense of total cumulative loading taken globally. Rather than in respect of certain individual and essentially anomalous responsibilities, which are not logically speaking consonant or harmonious with the broad spectrum of intermeshing and acceptable functions, and could indeed be said to place an excessive and supererogatory burden on the office, when considered in relation to the comparatively exiguous advantages of their overall centralisation". Prime Minister Jim Hacker: "You could do part of Humphrey's job!"

@Whoami691

6 жыл бұрын

"You COULD do part of Humphery's job!"

@YD-uq5fi

5 жыл бұрын

Are there really people who graduated from Oxford and Cambridge, who can talk like that on a whim?

@kgd9725

5 жыл бұрын

@@YD-uq5fi In the past I am sure there were . Today not so much .

@f1aziz

4 жыл бұрын

Read it three times, still don't get it, I get the point that that was the point entirely.

@welshpete12

4 жыл бұрын

No, if you listen careful it is perfectly good English .

Peter Cellier who played Sir Frank here is still alive and well in 2019, aged 90. He will turn 91 on July 12th 2019.

@connorcore7008

4 жыл бұрын

I remember his role in Keeping Up Appearances, among others.

@diomedes8791

4 жыл бұрын

Connorcore The Major :) Loved him in that part.

@tomstech4390

3 жыл бұрын

Me reading this after his birthday: (audible) Yes!!...Oh wait that doesnt mean he's still around its 2021 now. [Checks] He's still here now aged 92, God bless the man!

@pisse3000

3 жыл бұрын

@@tomstech4390 A month later and he’s still living it up! 🥳

@fezmancomments

3 жыл бұрын

A real presence on screen, Rich in so many ways. The way he prepares the duel in Barry Lyndon; cool as a cucumber. kzread.info/dash/bejne/eWqKyqeko8-reqw.html

Happy 92nd Birthday Peter Cellier (Sir Frank) RIP Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne and Derek Fowlds.

peter cellier: what a beautiful way of speaking. Such speech is rapidly disappearing, if not gone

The Key is absolute perfection from beginning to end.

@chrisweidner4768

5 жыл бұрын

This series is perfection from beginning to end.

Apparently, Nigel Hawthorne is not the only one who can handle extensive and complicated BS dialogue. What talent on this show. Even the bit players were masters of their craft.

@yevgeniygorbachev5152

4 жыл бұрын

That might be a trait of the British in general.

@alialmuhanna4938

3 жыл бұрын

I really like the character of Sir Frederick from the first season / series, nicknamed Jumbo. "No, Minister, I think you carry more weight." Hilarious !

@nkt1

2 жыл бұрын

I get the impression that Ceilier is glancing at cue cards during this monologue, whereas Hawthorne committed everything to memory.

@jdrancho1864

2 жыл бұрын

@@nkt1 I think his glance is very organic, very much keeping with the scene. I swear, the only guy reading cue cards is Hacker when he rattles off the list of what readers read what newspaper.

@TommyWylie

2 жыл бұрын

@@nkt1 I would have said it was a look of concentration and slight panic, due to all the cumulative loading!

It basically means that while he thinks Humphrey is not overstretched on the whole, his role as the cabinet secretary has been given certain responsibilities that he considers to be one-off odd jobs that don't have much relation with other reponsibilities of the office, and that any little advantage gained by putting one man in charge of everything is nullified by the fact that these odd jobs interfere with the primary tasks that the cabinet secretary must perform.

@jmack8767

2 жыл бұрын

Well translated!

@TommyWylie

2 жыл бұрын

He's doing an about-turn when he realises he (Frank) could do Humphrey's job and take the higher salary that comes with it.

@lafonevc5663

Жыл бұрын

The original was funny anyway.

@mistersir3020

Жыл бұрын

@@TommyWylie Would he get higher salary? I think it's just about having more "power", which brings more opportunities to get "influence", future jobs as board member, and so on.

@Ozymandias83

Жыл бұрын

@@mistersir3020 In a different episode, he sets the civil service payrise with Humphrey. His salary is whatever he wants it to be.

Brilliant casting for literally every role in this magnificent series. They could not have chosen any better!

@qpr543

10 ай бұрын

Unfortunately some morons think that it is a documentary.

Translation (I think): I meant to say the civil service itself is not overstretched. Certain responsibilities don't fit well into Humphrey's overall workload, though, and the effort of reassigning them would be worth it compared to the lesser benefits of centralization.

@draconianTL

5 жыл бұрын

Spot on paraphrasing.

@Zanator1

5 жыл бұрын

@@draconianTL Thank you!

@pralad1

5 жыл бұрын

Nailed it on the head!!👌👌

@QYXP

4 жыл бұрын

Centralisation*

@jdrancho1864

4 жыл бұрын

You're missing the point. The goal is obfuscation, not clarity.

I watched it growing up but it's only now, in my mid-50s, that I appreciate how wonderfully funny it was. The dialogue and interaction between the three main characters is pure gold.

A lot of the actors on this show were trained Shakespearean theatre performers. Peter Cellier was one of them. Absolute masters at the top of their craft.

That 'ah' is priceless

@nottmjas

2 жыл бұрын

There's a lovely verbal back-and-forth between Sir Humphery and Sir Frank later on. Humphery is worried about his position and is trying to find out what Frank discussed with the PM at this meeting. The exchange ended by Humphery saying "so there's nothing to worry about", and Frank responded "there's nothing for ME to worry about".

@drworm5007

9 ай бұрын

It is the juxtaposition of this selfsame, sub-verbal and minute vocalisation against the subsequent erudtious garrulity which is the very potency of the scene, for the readily comprehensible meaning of the former obviates any imperative to parse the latter into a kind of lucid resolution. The practical redundancy, but etiquettal necessity of Frank's elite loquacity serves as a metaphor for, or even microcosm of, the Civil Service's esotericism in general. On a more personal note, the despair one may feel for present and future generations, whose predicament is signified by a severe lack of discipline with regard to speech and education, is checked by the assurance that it is the innate ability to read mankind, not lexical scholarship which predicates the enjoyment of the program, and presumably similar may be said of life generally. We are, unmistakably so, witnesses to the decline of a civilised society, but the germ, no doubt, of true humanity will not be harmed by the present malaise instigated by nihilistic and amoral jellyfish.

@sgt.thompson98

10 күн бұрын

Thank you ​@@drworm5007, I couldn't have put it less clearly myself.

Along with Porridge, Yes Minister/Prime Minister is the absolute pinnacle of the BBC's output for decades. Even when you consider things like the Goode Life and One foot in the Grave which were massively popular.

The fundamental problem is that Sir Frank has to contradict himself on the fly, but not appear so. After damning Humphrey with faint praise, but generally supporting and staying out of the issue, he must go into attack mode when he sees a way to expand his purview at the expense of Sir Humphrey. All while sounding bureaucratically supportive to a superior

@SandeepKulshrestha

9 ай бұрын

And when he speaks bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, PM thinks that he could do Humphrey's job

Peter Cellier is still alive at 95! One of the only cast members still alive in 2024.

I guess I'm minimally qualified to watch this show. I guessed correctly how to spell "exiguous" when looking up the meaning of the word.

@mattender8323

3 жыл бұрын

Imagine the amount of linguistic skill needed for people to translate this show from English.

I love this episode because Hacker gets one over Humpy and you see that Hacker is slowly beginning to understand the lingo

They got the most fantastically oleaginous actors to play these civil servants.

I love this! Another one of those amazing monologues in the show! 😂 I love the way Sir Frank turns on a dime when he realizes he can get more power. A great performance by that actor.

Marvellous Peter Cellier!

Wonderful. The key is one of my favourite episodes of Yes prime minister. Especially, that 'green biased door(which doesn't exist)', between the cabinet office and 10, Downing street. Absolute brilliant writing. Plus this episode had the real prime minister & cabinet secretary in stitches of laughter too, at the time.

@ahseaton8353

3 жыл бұрын

This show was required watching on Downing Streer

@carolinian2009

Жыл бұрын

I thought I read somewhere that the Green Baize Door did in fact exist (at least, it did in the '80s. The writers had some inside people feeding them info about life inside Whitehall.

@00bikeboy

Жыл бұрын

@@carolinian2009 Yes, I recall watching a former public servant being interviewed and stating that precisely.

@karldelavigne8134

9 ай бұрын

Baize.

This is one of my favourite shows. Absolutely brilliant.

" He doesn't have a lot of work to do, but it'd make more sense for one person to do both jobs." LOL

Wonderful clip, thank you for this exiguous little post of Sir Frank Gordon played by the wonderful Peter Cellier

@DoctorBrodski

5 жыл бұрын

Peter is one of those unsung heroes of British film and TV. He brightens everything he's in.

@mellowfellow6816

3 жыл бұрын

"exiguous little" - supererogatory

I thought I was reasonably well-educated, but had to go to the dictionary for "exiguous".

@fenhen

5 жыл бұрын

It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

@MrEAus

4 жыл бұрын

Mr E Blackadder is anispeptic, phrasmotic...even compunctuous to have caused you and Dr Johnson such pericombobulation ;-)

@SportyMabamba

4 жыл бұрын

You didn’t have to look up “supererogatory”??

@ontledingen3348

3 жыл бұрын

Please enlighten us.

As long as you can hide what you say in speech that others don't understand, you cannot be held accountable for the outcome.

Love this. Great acting very Funny. As the Major in Keeping Up Appearances still makes me laugj 😊

John Nettleton used to narrate the short stories (often biographies of famous people) for the BBC's Blue Peter, speaking eloquently alongside the hand drawn sketches of the programme. He was first class then too. Here he is astonishingly good, deliberately understating the role. Exquisite acting. We didn't see enough of him.

@guguigugu

6 жыл бұрын

back when actors actually studied and developed their craft. they werent just there to look good on the screen.

@mrbennetts

4 жыл бұрын

Shame it isn’t John Nettleton. It’s Peter Cellier. Ho Ho.

@foggybest

4 жыл бұрын

@@mrbennetts Both of whom are still alive and well and in their 90's.

@mrbennetts

4 жыл бұрын

John Daly I remember John Nettleton was acting in The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre in London. He shouted a line from behind the audience towards the stage. Everybody jumped out of their skins; his voice was so powerful !

@TommyWylie

2 жыл бұрын

He was also in the New Statesman playing opposite Rik Mayall.

"You could do part of Humphrey's job" , i.e. speak gobbledygook! :-)

@leftcoaster67

3 жыл бұрын

It's not gobbledygook, it's overloaded vocabulary saying 20 words when 2 would suffice. In Sir Humphrey's civil service world it's to throw off listeners to hide in plain sight.

Great performance by Peter Cellier

Was there ever a more cerebally challenging comedy! I loved it! Truly talented actors. How many of today's actors could pour out those cleverly written scripts I wonder. ..

@lesgriffiths8523

11 ай бұрын

The answer , Colin, is not one. Les Griffiths

Such wonderful writing!

@johnking5174

2 жыл бұрын

Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn at their best

My favorite episodes are the ones where Sir Humpy is humbugged. I like to see the M/PM win!

Ah, when I say not overstretched, I was of course talking in a sense of total cumulative loading taken globally, rather than in respect of certain individual and essentially anomalous responsibilities which are not, logically speaking, consonant or harmonious with the broad spectrum of intermeshing and inseparable functions, and could indeed be said to place an excessive and supererogatory burden on the office, where considered in relation to the comparatively exiguous advantages of their overall centralisation.

@AdstarAPAD

6 жыл бұрын

I had to look up ""supererogatory"" first time i have ever heard the word spoken..

@calvinjonesyoutube

5 жыл бұрын

@@AdstarAPAD me to, and exiguous. It's a good vocabulary test. Anyone know all of these words before comming here?

@YD-uq5fi

4 жыл бұрын

@@AdstarAPAD The word 'Supererogatory' was not used correctly.

@davidmichaels8934

4 жыл бұрын

Brilliant absolutely brilliant!

" You could do part of Humphrey's job ".

A masterpiece.

The look on Hacker's face at the end is just incredible. Never before has the Socratic insight that "I know only one thing: that I know nothing" been more applicable.

Good lord, he speaks like Humphrey 😮

Absolutely brilliant !

just when I thought I heard it all ; this clip :)

Captain F from the BBC series Warship. Great and versatile actor.

Fabulous

I forgot just how much I lovedcyes minister and yes prime minister aswell as others like the 2 ronnies and Morecambe and Wise

This must be the best ever...taking everything into account , having regard to overall policy, as set out from time to time in the follow up to the the basic primary legislation , and as further elaborated on in the various government regulations pursuant to the development and basic requirement for further legislation which expresses the particularities of local and national situations which can, necessitate particular evasive measures likely to alleviate tension between the necessary departmental practices which may have developed between the Cabinet and the Treasury in the overall context of administrative requirements for smooth and efficient relations between myself and Sir Humphrey in general...and to preserve overall balance...from time to time............!!!!

Wonderful scene .

I don't know how these actors remembered their page-long monologues -- particularly when the speech is loaded with so many polysyllabic circumlocutions.

@viperswhip

3 жыл бұрын

If you watch some of the shows about this show, Nigel (Humphrey) actually remembered them for years afterwards as well...ouch, my brain can't even handle that level.

@xuanwayne5995

2 жыл бұрын

Nigel (Sir Humphrey) request the screenwriter not to change his lines three weeks prior to acting so he does have time remembering and analyzing the lines.

Ooh I love it....

Superb British comedy

Brilliant! Saying so little but saying so much.

Paul was a Genius ❤

Still goes on today😵‍💫

I wish I had the skill to spout long-winded nonsense when I want Alas, possessing this asinine aptness in which dictation itself can be befittingly utilized to the purpose and ends as to create and engender ultimately an avowedly fatuous and frankly unintelligible concatenation of locutions from which no elucidation can be extricated is not consistent with the extended faculties of my propensity.

@festethephule7553

5 жыл бұрын

What does "elucidation" mean?

@esbenandersen5706

5 жыл бұрын

@@festethephule7553 IIRC the dictionary would say something like clarification, longer explanation or derive meaning, and here it's mostly in the last sense: Because of the long-winded, overintellectual use of words, we ought not be able to get any meaning from Haydens comment. Of course the humour here comes from the desire to be able to spout long-winded nonsense, and then, in a long-winded (But not nonsensical!) fashion delivering a self-contradictory admittance that such a feat is beyond their ability.

@festethephule7553

5 жыл бұрын

@@esbenandersen5706 That's the thing though, it's not actually unintelligible. The only word I was missing was the one you provided the answer for (thank you btw), after I had that defined I was able to pick up on what he said. But yes, this is indeed hilarious, for the exact reason you've stated XD.

@peuppeuppeup

3 жыл бұрын

@@festethephule7553 e - lucidate . lucidate derivate from 'lux' meaning ' light'

@danalmariti509

3 жыл бұрын

You could do Sir Humphrey’s job!

I hope to one day be able to write and speak like that

Sir frank should have been in it more

British masterpiece

The major 😆

When one considers the matter of being overstretched; is it placing a heavier than undue burden on the incumbent of the office in question? Or can they adapt to the heavier than expected burden in the enormously great expectations of the office? For you would not have anointed such an individual to the office initially if they were not able to handle the tremendous responsibilities.

That punchline is comedy gold 😂

The day they said speaking in clear English is the day we might get somewhere with politics lol.

They should do an American version of this show!

The real problem for an Australian is that Sir Frank looks dangerously like Sir Frank Packer… 😂

You couldn't make this up - except that someone did!

Frank's worse/better than Humphrey. I've always been able to understand Humphrey's speeches, but I had to look up several words to make sense of this.

@CiceroLounge

7 жыл бұрын

i looked up exiguous :) the writers of this sitcom stand head and shoulders above in language terms anything i've ever seen

@CiceroLounge

7 жыл бұрын

i looked up exiguous :) the writers of this sitcom stand head and shoulders in their use of language

@jonsouth1545

6 жыл бұрын

As an English teacher I try to use Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister whenever possible.

@psidhu1979

6 жыл бұрын

Frank was his daddy mate... he's brilliant!

@peterflom6878

4 жыл бұрын

Frank's speech makes less sense than most of Humphrey's

I was of course talking in the sense of total cumulative loading, taken globally rather than in respect to certain individual and essentially anomalous responsibilities which are not, logically speaking, consonant or harmonious with the broad spectrum of intermeshing and separate functions and could indeed be said to place an excessive & supererogatory burden on the the office when considered in relation to the comparatively exiguous advantages of their overall consideration centralisation.

I may need a transcript of that sketch. (my thesaurus just melted)

Ah Oh Yes Human cognitive evolution

@medavaramjitamitra8120

4 жыл бұрын

Ah oh yes taking globally.... ☺☺😀😀

@glenysrobinson4700

Жыл бұрын

just wanted ​@@medavaramjitamitra8120 a indigo and 3 Xavieraex Of

His dialog of nothing is so in tune with today's political climate that the humor is darker than it should be.

Bernard doesn’t seem to think much about the idea right at the end

Sir Frank has one quality that Humphrey lacks, and Humphrey is the better for it. Frank comes across as so oily, glue would slide off him.

They can't make them like this now.

Ah. I think I will make a sacrifice.

The funniest thing is he makes sense.

His tongue Like that of the lady who’s worth was $50 according to blazing saddles

Did that gentleman play the colonel(?) that preyed on Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances?

@Entropy__

3 ай бұрын

Yep

Still good.

You could do part of Humphries job 😀

Plus ça change...

I had to look up “exiguous”

I learned two new words : 'Supererogatory' and 'Exiguous'. I wonder why words like that exist, when there are simpler words for the same thing. Can I invent some of my own words, and have them included in Webster's dictionary?

@guguigugu

5 жыл бұрын

they existed before the simpler ones

@chriswatson7965

4 жыл бұрын

Words like these are Latin in origin and were first used when English was still developing into the modern language it is today. They existed and were used in educated circles, as Latin was seen as the universal language in a manner that English is today. Many such words did ultimately make it into common usage, but words such as supererogatory and exiguous did not become popular and remained only within the domain of technical jargon.

I wonder, when the civil service people start to talk without saying anything, how do they do that? Is it like when someone's drunk and start talking without any conscious decision? The movement of the mouth without any input from the brain?

@ThePamastymui

6 жыл бұрын

Well, civil service selects best shit-talkers...

@guguigugu

5 жыл бұрын

this is what they are taught at oxbridge

@guguigugu

4 жыл бұрын

@TheRenaissanceman65 the MPs only managed third class and lower

@larrybaby9377

4 жыл бұрын

You miss the point. Sir Frank does say something, and what he says is perfectly coherent, taken on its own. His and Sir Humphrey's speeches can never be dismissed as simply "saying nothing". That is the whole point.

@TommyWylie

2 жыл бұрын

No, that's politicians.

Hell no

Anyone care to type that up and use it in an interview? Go on, I dare you!

Season1 episode 2

@johnking5174

2 жыл бұрын

No, it was actually Series 1, Episode 4 of Yes Prime Minister, titled "The Key".

"Exiguous" what the heck is that?

@seamusoflatcap

2 жыл бұрын

A dead iguous, I think.

@johnking5174

2 жыл бұрын

It means very small in size or inadequate according to the dictionary.

The laugh tracks feel quite annoying in 2022. The only part that did not age well.

@Prince__Teclis

Жыл бұрын

It's not a laugh track, it's a studio audience.

Speak prose man

Sir Frank talked a good game, but he was not actually on Humphrey's level.

@GoldenSunAlex

2 жыл бұрын

To be fair, Humphrey was only able to beat Frank with help from Sir Arnold.

Even if I was Joseph Stalin I could not trust a guy as sleazy as Sir Frank.

@Alexanderiii

3 жыл бұрын

Stalin didn't trust anyone, he was a famous paranoid.

@jgmediting7770

2 жыл бұрын

As a tory politician once said, when asked if we could have trusted hitler if we did a deal with him during ww2 - politics is never about trust, it’s about mutual self interest.

The word 'Supererogatory' was not used correctly.

Classic BBC comedy, before the #SJW takeover...

@jgmediting7770

2 жыл бұрын

Weird how the sjw take over coincided with a tory government making right wing tory appointments to run the bbc, isn’t it.