[Malcolm wants to discuss Hugh's speech at the school.]
[sighing heavily] I'm hacked off, mate.
[stuttering] But we-we-we killed-we killed it. It's-it's-it's-it's killed.
Yeah, but once you start the fire...And we didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning, et cetera, et cetera.
S-Sorry, Malcolm, you're not making any sense.
Prime Minister, obviously, he's, uh, on the plane in Stockholm, and somebody hits him with The World At One. He thinks it's the Treasury trying to stiff him one, so he, um... [Malcolm takes a long pause] He stuck with the story.
He liked it?
Yeah, he's backing the Snooper Force.
[smiling] Oh, right. [beat] We shouldn't really then have, I mean, you shouldn't really have, uh, told us to, uh...Should you? [chuckles]
[unamused] Don't should me, Hugh. 'Cos I'll should you right back. I'll should you right through that window. None of this should be happening, SHOULD it? SHOULD IT? SHOULD IT?
Is that should in the...sense of yes, or...?
It's should in the sense of "You should do as you're fucking told."
What, um...What are we gonna do now?
You're gonna completely reverse your position.
Hang on-hang on-hang on a second. Hang-Malcolm, it's-it's not actually that, um – I mean, that's gonna be quite hard, really.
Yes, well the announcement that you didn't make today, you did.
No, no, I didn't, and there were television cameras there while I was not doing it.
Fuck them.
I'm not quite sure h– what level of reality I'm supposed to be operating on.
Look, this is what they run with. I tell them that you said it, they believe that you said it. They don't really believe you said it, they know that you never said it.
Right.
But it's in their interests to say that you said it. Because if they don't say that you said it, they're not gonna get what you say tomorrow or the next day, when I decide to tell them what it is you're saying.
Yeah, I-I am following this. I just...
I had a friend who used to indulge in extramarital affairs, OK? He would go off and he'd have some dalliance, and every Monday he'd come back and he'd meet his wife. And he told me that all he did was inside his head turn a little switch. The affair never happened. OK?
Right.
There's not a prob -- I don't -- What is the problem with this?
The problem with it...First of all, I -- I didn't get much dalliance.
Get it into your head. Rewind today into your head.
OK, stop explaining it to me!
I have to fucking explain it to you, man. You haven't been here long enough.
More from this episode
All quotes from this episode →More The Thick Of It quotes · These quotes come from Wikiquote's The Thick Of It pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.