"He's making Paul Remington a cabinet minister." "I mean, who's next, huh?" "Shaun Ryder?" "Peaches Geldof?" "How about the shoe bomber?" "He'd be good, yeah." "Well, he's a man with ambition." "He was the first man to put a fucking bomb in a shoe." "The Department of Energy and Climate Change as well." "That's more important than Defence, in a way." "If we haven't got a planet left, we can't blow the fucker up, can we?" "Where the fuck is Doug Hayes?" "Yes, we put in a lot of calls." "Well, put in a lot more calls." "I'm talking psycho ex-girlfriend with a really good tariff." "Go on." "Go and fucking crawl under the floorboards and die." "Send us a postcard!" "From the great, deserted, vast desert of the political wilderness." "And call it Big Cunt Diary." "Lisa, this is Urban Renewal." "Can you put this on the Leaning Tower of Urban Renewal?" "Right, I'm off to fetch her from reception." "Have you got that photo?" "I don't want to bring the wrong one up." "No, actually, it's okay." "I'll recognise her." "I'm good with faces." "That's why I always record Crimewatch." "Ooh, Malcolm Tucker is on his way in." "It's all suddenly very real." "Should I have read this..." "Should I have gone through..." "Oh, no, don't worry about that." "That is purely ornamental, much like Glenn's balls." "Because if you are worried about Malcolm, well, you know, Olly and I have amassed one or two tips how to deal with him over the years." "It's pretty much common sense, really." "Don't drive a gas guzzler, don't sign up for Bupa, don't have an affair." "Don't tell racist jokes, however ironic." "Don't send your children to independent schools." "OLLY:" "Don't dig up Diana and have Patrick Moore play Nazi drinking songs on her ribs." "Yeah, I suppose so." "He's gonna have to let her go free-range for a week, isn't he?" "Till after the by-election." "Then he can snap her beak off, cram her into the battery cage." "Nicola, "I'm not really good with cages."" "(IMITATING MALCOLM) "Get in there, Nicola." ""Fucking get in till you're perfectly square" ""and you're shiteing cuboid eggs."" "terri:" "Thank God I'm safe." "I'm glued to this department and you'd have to steam me off." "Yeah." "Well, you don't have to worry about me." "You don't hang around in this business as long as I have without picking up contacts." "Yes, but Disraeli's dead, Glenn." "He died in the Crimea." "Did you not hear the town crier announce it?" "Yeah." "Jim?" "This morning." "It's never too soon to go to Leamington." "It's the Venice of the Midlands, if Venice was fucking horrible." "Have a lovely time in Leamington, yeah?" "I hear it's got the best Lidl in the West Midlands." "Why don't we..." "We can stop this from happening." "We can make a blacklist of words" " you should never stand in front of." " Yeah." " In case the press get to do..." " Peacock." " Peacock." " Shuttlecock." "Of course, you'll have to avoid Scunthorpe altogether." "And Middlesex, Essex, Wessex." "And the village of Shithead in rural Kent." "Yes, "hot water" signs could be cropped to say "twat"." "Don't kill yourself, though." "Well, not over this, you know." "I mean, this project is as dead as Alan Carr in a prison riot." "There is no coverage here." "I can't..." "There's nothing." "I've got one bar." "It's a one-bar town." "Like a Western." "Backwaters of Leamington." "You know I grew up round here, do you?" "Well, they wouldn't have had mobile phones then, so..." "And we need to be investing, uh, at least..." "Invest?" "Did I hear her say invest?" "Olly, she's gone off-piste." " She's off the mountain now." " GLENN: (SIGHING) Oh, Jesus." "She's so far off the mountain, she's being finger-banged in a chalet by Bigfoot." "Yes." "We're all fine, thank you, Terri." "En route home, past the lovely hamlet of Tiredness Can Kill Take A Break, according to the sign." " You haven't told her, have you?" " OLLY:" "Thank you, Terri." " TERRl:" "Bloody hell." " Bye for now." "Do you, um..." "Do you ever do word search puzzles?" "I've been a bit busy recently, so..." "Because I..." "Yeah." "I was just thinking that if you were to look at the word on the poster, "Liam Bentley"," "with word search puzzles in mind, if you look in the middle, or if you were, you know, for example, cropping it for a national newspaper, you might get some other words." ""Ambentle"?" "I was thinking, "I am bent."" "Right." "Okay." "So basically I've just had my photo taken by the nation's press in front of a giant poster saying," " "I am bent."" " Yes." "Yep." "Listen, sweetheart, I'm going to just hand you over" " to a really funny, silly man." " Hang on." " Talk to Josh." " Okay." " Josh, dude, how's it hanging?" " He's five." "Um..." "How are you?" " How are you, Terri?" " I work with your mummy." "Well, for now, at least." "Why the fuck was I put into the middle of a poster with the words "I am bent" written above my head?" ""Bent" means, you know, if you were to lean over..." "We just didn't really want you to be on the fringes of things, you know, to be too much on the side." "So you just put me slap bang in the middle of being bent." "Yeah, that makes perfect sense." "Thanks for that, Terri." "Did none of you fucking see it coming?" " I mean, did you not spot it?" " You know, like a straw." " You must have bendy straws." " My 5-year-old son spotted it." " Did none of you spot it?" " That's a bent." "Well, Glenn kind of spotted it but..." "No, not really." "Glenn." "Great." "So I should have fucking taken Glenn." "Right, well, it's been absolutely lovely chatting with you, Josh." "Um, yeah." " I think you're calling me a fruit bat." " (MOBILE RINGING)" " I may have misheard." "I'm not sure." " Malcolm, hello." "I'm going to pass you over to your mummy." " Uh..." " What?" "On second thoughts, tell me more about your fruit bat." "Congratulations, Nicola." "That's a very, very bold statement." "It really is." "I mean, you are the first gay minister at DoSAC." "Well, the first openly gay minister at DoSAC." " Yes, well, I'm out and I'm ashamed..." " Bye." "Did you hang up on my son?" "No, no." "No, he hung up on me." "He said he was bored of me." "Yeah, well, that makes two of us." "Right." "How do I change something that happened on the 13th and let it go to the 14th?" "Okay, so, click on "View"." " "Copy." - "Copy", okay." "Excellent." "Planning meeting on the 14th." "Right." "Well, I've got that we did have a planning meeting on the 14th." "Exactly, Robyn." "(CLICKING TONGUE)" "I'd be careful doing that, Terri." "Looks like you've got palsy." "I don't know where "smug" comes from." "I mean, I've aged 10 years in the past week." "I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and I thought," ""Fuck me." "It's a pantomime dame."" "So an informal, off-the-record lunch meet at The Guardian." "Apparently it's a sort of shoot-the-breeze, you know," ""Have you seen the latest Mad Men?" ""Isn't Andrew Neil a jerk?" Sort of thing." "The Guardian?" "Don't tell them any fucking anecdotes about your children, or they'll offer you a fucking column." "Do you not back up, you people?" "I back up." "I didn't even know what backing up means." "Well, we have actually asked the Home Office and, extraordinarily, they do in fact wipe their hard drives." "Yeah." "They told me that they do it to make room." "It's a precaution, against data loss." "Is that another one of your fucking jokes?" " No." " NICOLA:" "Right." "When I came into this department I thought, "Okay." ""Let's turn a fresh page."" "So I turned the fresh page, and you, collectively, have drawn a gigantic fucking cock on it!" "I'm just gonna go and..." "Part of the strategy is to warn us when Malcolm is coming back." "So it's your job to block the path." " You're the Spartans of Thermopylae." " Glenn?" "Yes." "You're Richard Egan with an oily chest." "One possible strategy might be not to tell anybody." "What, we keep it a secret?" "Sorry, sorry." "Malcolm is coming." "Sorry." "What?" "You were meant to be delaying him." "You're supposed to be the Spartans." "I couldn't really remember what the Spartans did." "I'm not as old as you, Glenn." "My advice on this is straight bat." "Put it out, quite honestly." "Full press release sometime in August." "Saturday night, just after the Sundays have gone to bed." "Ideally when a celebrity's died." "Ideally tragically." "Something like George Clooney's been stabbed by a fan." "What an awful thing to say!" "No, I'm not going to play your selective amnesia card." "And I'm not going to wait and see if Meryl Streep has a stroke." "I think I'm just going to put it out there." "Good for you." "Well done." "That's the right thing." "Not the data loss, obviously." "But just how shit all of you are." "This department." "Never mind not fit for purpose." "Not even fit for human fucking habitation." "No wonder things were going wrong before I arrived, because this whole place is just packed full of crud jockeys." "Crud jockeys?" "Yes, jockeys riding around on their own crud." "And I'm here to hose you all down." "That's my take." "What do you reckon?" "Do you want to refer to the senior staff of this department as crud jockeys?" "Thanks for helping with the strategising." "Strategising?" "You lot couldn't fucking strategise a rock-hard wang into a dripping wet hole." "GLENN:" "Robyn, can I have a word?" "I'm on a tea run." "Apparently that's my job now." "I'm the fucking tea lady." "Would you like a bit of Dundee cake with that, sir?" "Have a fucking biscuit, why don't you?" "I'll give you a hand." "I was just wondering, you know, re the data loss thing." "Do you have a copy of the email that you sent authorising the wipe?" "You mean the one you told me to write?" "I don't think there's any need to be aggressive." "(SCOFFS) This isn't an episode of The Wire, you know." "Somebody isn't going to come up and, you know..." "Let's just both look out for each other's backs and, you know, if anyone tries to finger anyone, well, we'll just say, well, you know, "Fuck you."" "Okay." "Fuck you." "Where is she?" "Come on. (THUMPING WINDOW)" "She's coming down the stairs on all fours." "I've got to get going." "I've gotta get you lot to some waste ground so I can stand over you both while you dig your own fucking graves." "MARIANNE:" "Data." "Exactly." "I heard what you said about your data loss." "Did you say that?" "No." "Well, I don't remem..." "I don't recognise those words and I don't recognise you." "What?" "So, you see, the Minister may just have misspoken." "But what she said was just words, right?" "Not real statements." "You know, that's like if there was a blast of wind over a harp and it hit the strings, this wind, that made the harp accidentally say, "I'm a cat fucker."" "Would that mean that that harp was actually a cat fucker in real life?" " In reality." "In the world we live in." " That's a really good question." "Yeah." "And are you on this list, Glenn, at all?" "Of course I'm not on the list." "I'm too close to the Minister." "(LAUGHS) Please, I inherited you." "You were like a bat that was already living in the loft when I moved in." "(QUIETLY) I told you who I want to sack." "Please just get on and do it." "It's not that hard." "I'm not asking you to push Stephen Fry under a fucking bus." "What?" "I mean..." " Lemon Zinger." "Lemon Zinger." " Have you got some in?" " No." " Well, I think you should have done." "And I'm now the shopper as well?" "I'll make the fucking tea and I'll do the shopping." "Anyone asks me to get a Costa Coffee, I'll throw it in their fucking eyes." "(EXCLAIMS IN DISGUST)" "Twats." "A bunch of fucking twats." "No, Dan Miller is not positioning himself for the leadership." "Well, for a start, you can't have a prime minister called Dan." "People called Dan work in fucking fitness centres and listen to West Coast jazz." "Was that about the Dan Miller movement?" "'Cause I heard he was recruiting." "No, listen." "I've just got a text from Phil B." " Apparently, Helen Mirren's here." " What?" "It's pretty amazing." "You know, the sexy Queen." "She's downstairs, now." "She's doing the Guardian podcast." "And that Phil..." "Phil reckons Helen Mirren's single." "She's sort of like an English Kim Cattrall, isn't she?" "I reckon you might have a shot there, Glenn." "Perhaps you could go to the guest house and get the speech." "Mmm-hmm?" "Okay, right." "Get your bags." "Okay." "I'll do that." "Oh, God, no." "I'm really busy." "Uh, okay, no, look." "I'll go back to the guest house." "Sorry, what's your name?" "Julie something?" " Price." " Okay, yeah." "Laters, dudes." "Can I use your bog quickly?" "Well, I was nipping in here to get something for the Minister." " I don't see why you can't go..." " Thanks." "Nicola, you strike me very much as somebody that doesn't do jokes." "You strike me as somebody who doesn't do any fucking thing!" "(CHUCKLING)" "Did you not say you were busy?" "Yeah, well, I am." "Yeah." "No, I am." "I'm up against it." "I'm spitting feathers." ""Spitting feathers" means you're thirsty." "I'm thirsty as well." "Anybody fancy a pint?" "Joke." "Uh, no, I've gotta wait for Glenn to bring Julie what's-her-face back from the toilet so I can give her the tour." " Where are they?" " Glenn has taken her to Nicola's toilet." "(LAUGHS) It's like being back in college, isn't it?" "You know, Freshers' Week." "It's just as busy, isn't it?" " NICOLA:" "Stop talking." " Right, okay." "Oh, dear." "That's bad, Glenn and a woman in a toilet." "(IMITATING GLENN) "Hello, Julie." ""Would you like to see the Minister's room?" ""It's very cosy, isn't it?" "Just right for a little kissy-kissy?" ""Maybe some tickle-me tickle-me?" ""Have you met my little friend, old blind Bob?"" "Just doing an impression of my friend, old blind Bob." "Liar." "Listen, I'm not being really horrible, but are you actually autistic?" "No." "But you'd be surprised how many people ask me that." "GLENN:" "Excellent." "Shh." "Deep breath." "NICOLA:" "Yes, I know." "Thank you." "Fuck off!" "Thank you!" "Right, yes." "What do you want us to do?" "(EXCLAIMS)" "You can't drown in that sink, can you?" "You can't drown in that sink." "You can barely get your hands under the tap." "OLLY:" "I've never met the Prime Minister." " Can you believe that?" " Yeah." "Well, you know, he is my boss." "I do quite an important job for him." "It's a bit..." "What I'm saying..." "You're very lucky to find yourself in this position," " is what I'm saying." " Hang on a minute." "You do realise my husband is in a box to get me in this position?" "Olly?" "Olly." " What the fuck?" " Oh, my God." "That's looking a lot better, don't you think?" "Yeah, it is." "Don't worry, Glenn, we'll look after it." "Julie, John's coming with you." "Can I just have a word with the boys just for a second, okay?" "All right, listen." "Keep smiling, just keep smiling, listen." "The line on this is that it never fucking happened, right?" " What?" " Yeah, yeah." "Malcolm Tucker abhors violence." "All right?" "Yeah?" "And if anybody says anything different, I'll slice off their fucking nipples and I'll send them to Heston Blumenthal to turn them into fucking ice cream, right?" "And I need you, big man." "Why?" "Because I'm going to invite some hacks up here." "I'm going to give them some drinks and I'm going to show them what good mates we are, huh?" " Do we have to?" " Yes, we do have to do it." "And I want you to be telling some really fucking amusing anecdotes about our long weekend at Prague." "He's going to hit me again, isn't he?" "I don't mind being hit." "It's just the making up afterwards that scares me shitless." " (MOBILE RINGING)" " Hello?" "NICOLA:" "Terri." "Brilliant." " You're there." "Right." " Yes?" "Terri, I really need you to come down here and help me." "All I've got here, right, is a psycho man, a bleeding man and a sarky teenager." "It's like some fucking logic problem." "How do I get the chickens across the river?" "How do I get the fucking chickens across the river?" "Just calm down, Nicola." "By the way, are you still looking for a joke?" "Yeah." "Yeah, quickly." "How do you get a paper baby?" "I don't know." "How do you get a paper baby?" "You marry an old bag." "What's that got to do with Peter Mannion?" "Well, I mean, fair enough, I suppose." "What you could do is..." "I know." "I've got it." "I've got it." "I've got it." "What we could is go, "How did Peter Mannion get a paper baby?" ""He married an old bag." See?" "Tom, it's like the Cold War all over again." "I don't know who's a spy or who the fuck I'm working for." "No, I'm not being paranoid." "Who told you that?" "Yeah, I'll see you later - at the safe house." "Oh, and here's Malcolm Tucker." "You're live on the Telegraph party conference vodcast." "Can you spare us a few minutes?" "I think that's a no." "I'm going to kill you because you told some spotty-faced blogger that I hit Glenn." " But I didn't." " But you would say that." " I didn't." " But you would say that." "But I really didn't." "Have you got proof?" "Of your idiocy?" "Oh, yes." "It's standing, quivering, in front of me like Glenn Cullen's manboobs." "See, this is the problem with the modern age." "The blogosphere." "And it is a fear." "It's everywhere." "We call it the i-Zilla." "No one can tame the Beast of Blogmin." "What the fuck are you talking about?" "I can deal with these bloggers." "Threaten them." "It's your fucking job, isn't it?" "Malcolm, that is not how the internet works." "It's a world-wide, you know, web." "That's where that comes from." "Look." "I need you to find the incy-wincy fucking spider, take your rolled-up wank mag and fucking squash the fucker." "Right, can you do that?" "Malcolm, I've got a lot on..." "Not a problem." "That's a Duggan promise." "OLLY: (IMITATING NARRATOR) Keep your eye on the bloke in the grey." "... The Telegraph party conference vodcast." "Can you spare us a few minutes?" "(OLLY AND NICOLA CHUCKLING)" "Can you make it go backwards?" "(IMITATING MALCOLM) No." "No surrender." "Look at that." " NICOLA:" "It's the little smile..." " I know." "I think he might be part penguin." "Waddle, waddle, waddle." "You wouldn't know she'd never done this before, would you?" " I think she's doing very well actually." " Mmm." "She's doing terrific." "And actually, she's great fun to work for." "I mean, contrary to her image, she's actually a very funny person indeed, in person." "She could probably do stand-up." " (SCOFFS)" " I think that's pushing it a bit." "Everyone says that." "It's just no one wants to meet her in person." " This is fun, isn't it?" " You're such a cunt." "There you are." "There you go with the banter again." "You're a funny fucker." "OLLY:" "Oh, you've got see this." "Come here." "Glenn is putting on his retrosexual moves." " No." " Yeah." " Who is she?" " Don't know." "I don't know, but she's smashed." "If she is a she." "I think I can see her madam's apple there." "NICOLA:" "Maybe they're just talking." "(BOTH EXCLAIMING)" "That's horrific." "This is like the worst porn film ever." "This is like the porn film where the woman rings for a special advisor to give her an overview of the last five years of social policy" " and they end up fucking." " (LAUGHING)" "The Porn Ultimatum." "Fuck Stewart and his whiteboard and his post-post-modernism or whatever it is for this week." "I just know he's going to suggest a team-building weekend." ""Oh, how about Ypres?" Or, "No, let's update that." "Dresden."" " Malcolm's coming." " (SIGHS) Mood?" "Well, he told me to do something with my penis that I don't think is actually permissible under the Judeo-Christian moral code." "But it could've been a jovial suggestion." "Fine." "Okay, well, let's get a move on before everything turns a bit spaghetti western." "She was actually confiding in me about it and I said, "What do you want me to say?" "School's hard." ""I remember it bloody well." "It was horrible."" "Chinese torture." "The cliques." "Meetings behind the bike shed." "Having to eat the biscuit in the biscuit game." "Phil." "Phil, help me out here." "Look." "What are these vectors, Posh and Shit?" "They refer to schools." "You see, Murray's daughter was down to go here, you know, teeny, Sloaney, private girls' school." "But now, she's going here." "Local comprehensive, bang in the middle of a poor catchment area." "You know, it's like Shameless, but without the jokes." "But with all the binge drinking and shapeless clothes." "STEWART:" "So, how are we going to deploy this?" " We're not." " That simply doesn't compute, Peter." "We're working with very limited information." "Who is the very obvious link between the two warring tribes?" "Me." "We're not doing this." "(SCOFFS) You're like the bridge over the River Kwai." "Phil, for fuck's sake." "This is my relationship we're talking about." " Just 'cause you've never had one." " Yeah." " Yeah." "Kwai me a river, Emma." " Brilliant." "Look, you know the deal, Emma." "Relationships come and go like the next generation of Apple products." "I'm already on my third marriage, and between you and me, wedding 4G is already in development." "If only you could get a pre-nup on an iPhone, yeah?" "I'd like you to take Phil with you to DoSAC." "Yeah." "Stellar work with this." "Emma, I think you should stay here." "There are issues of attachment." "You are "dating" the enemy." "What?" "No way." "I want to go." "We're all going, aren't we?" "This isn't a school trip to the Natural History Museum." "Oh, shame." "It is really exciting, though." "It's like going somewhere you shouldn't." "Like an adult bookstore." "On second thoughts, could I just go on my own?" "Have you met Mr Darcy yet?" "Hmm?" "Has he swung in through the window, in a little top hat and smoking jacket?" "Left you with some shit chocolates?" "Raffles, the gentleman MP." "Yeah." "Well, at least he is a man and not a floppy, girly-boy baby-man." "(CHUCKLING) Girly-boy baby-man." "I think that is literally the most confusing insult I've ever had." "Yes, he is." "Well, he is more than one man, isn't he?" "He's at least two men that you've put together there." "(IMITATING TERRl) "Oh, Peter." "Peter, so nice to meet a real man." ""A man with experience." "Oh, Peter, what's this?" ""A reusable condom made from cat gut?" "Oh, Peter, you devil!"" "This is mint." "It's like the fall of Troy but with visitor's passes instead of a wooden horse." ""It may be that the gulfs will wash us down" ""It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles" ""And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."" "I meant the film Troy?" "Awesome." "God, it's horrible here." "It's like one of those humane abattoirs." "Or that Mormon repository where they're gathering the names of everyone who ever lived and waiting for the sky to turn into a retractable roof." "PETER:" "And who's that?" "PHIL:" "Glenn Cullen." "Yeah." "Roughly the same age as Chesil Beach." "Similar complexion." " One is shingle, the other has shingles." " Very good." "Mr Mannion, hello." " James Drury." " Oh, hello, James." " How nice to meet you." " You, too." "Very nice to meet you." " Phil Smith, researcher." " Hello." "You weren't taking photos, were you?" "Strictly speaking, that's forbidden." "No, I'm checking the air quality." "I've got asthma." "Have you?" "Oh, poor chap." " Nicola." " (NICOLA WHIMPERING)" "Right." "Look." "Okay, um..." "Gosh." "Obviously, you're not a shit mum." "That's the first thing." "I mean, you've got three really well-balanced children." "I've got four kids." "Well, I know." "I know." "I know." "But the other three are." "You don't belong in politics, Phil." "That's your problem." "You should be, I don't know, rowing across the Atlantic in your old school satchel, that's more your scene, isn't it?" "I think you'll find I'm very much at home here." "I mean, this is brilliant." "It's like being handed the blueprints to the Death Star." "I cannot wait to drop a fat one down your ventilation shaft." "Fantastic." "You literally couldn't sound more public school if you said, "Rupert's got a vagina in his bum" ""and I had sex with it when nanny wasn't looking."" "You all right there, Phil?" "Looked like you might have had a fat one dropped down your own ventilation shaft." "Do you fancy a cup of tea?" " Yes, you got anything herbal?" " Okay, yeah." "Something perfumed and essentially gay." "Oh, speak of the devil." "Whoa, you look like you've shat yourself." "I had a close encounter with Malcolm Tucker." "(EMMA LAUGHING)" "It's not funny." "He's like some horrible character from an lan Rankin novel." " Where's Peter?" " Yeah, where is Peter?" "I don't know." "It's a bit of a blur, to be honest." "I just kind of ran out of the building." "I just kept walking." " I ended up in Greenwich." " Greenwich?" "I think I was following the river." "I wanted to get to the sea." "We should have gone in hard and early on the bullying angle." "Ironically, Stewart, you have." "You've been bullying me all day about leaking a story about bullying." "Do you know, in a way, I like this." "Your resistance." "It makes you burn brighter somehow." "Do you channel all your passions into pie charts, Stewart?" "I don't even think you're excited about winning." "I bet when you orgasm, you just put a little tick on a chart next to your bed." "Right." "I'm going to fuck off now." "And I think you should fuck off, Stewart." "Emma, go and get Phil some Imodium." "Phil, tidy up the office." "Looks like a dirty protest at an ad agency."