Editing Yes Minister (section)

===Inspirations===
The writers were inspired by a variety of sources, including sources inside government, published material and contemporary news stories.<ref>Comedy Connections. Season 6. 2008-07-25.</ref> Jay has written that as early as 1965, he had been induced by developments in the [[Timothy Evans]] case to wonder about an "inverted alchemy" operating in Whitehall, capable of frustrating the most impassioned campaigner.<ref name="Informed Sources"/> The writers also met several leading senior civil servants under the auspices of the [[Royal Institute of Public Administration]], a [[think-tank]] for the public service sector, which led to the development of some plot lines. Some situations were conceived as fiction, but were later revealed to have real-life counterparts. The episode "[[The Compassionate Society]]" depicts a hospital with 500 administrative staff but no doctors, nurses or patients. Lynn recalls that "after inventing this absurdity, we discovered there were six such hospitals (or very large empty wings of hospitals) exactly as we had described them in our episode."<ref name="lynnweb"/>

In a programme screened by the BBC in early 2004, paying tribute to the series, it was revealed that Jay and Lynn had drawn on information provided by two insiders from the governments of [[Harold Wilson]] and [[James Callaghan]], namely [[Marcia Falkender, Baroness Falkender|Marcia Falkender]] and [[Bernard Donoughue, Baron Donoughue|Bernard Donoughue]].<ref>Jonathan Lynn Comedy Rules: From the Cambridge Footlights to Yes, Prime Minister. Faber & Faber, 18 August 2011 {{ISBN|9780571277971}}</ref>{{rp|98}} The published diaries of [[Richard Crossman]] also provided inspiration.<ref name="lynnweb"/><ref>{{Cite book|last=Crossman |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Crossman |title=Diaries of a Cabinet Minister: Selections, 1964–70 |year=1979 |publisher=Hamish Hamilton Ltd |location=London |isbn= 0-241-10142-5}}</ref> In particular the first of these describe his battles with "the Dame", his Permanent Secretary, the formidable [[Evelyn Sharp, Baroness Sharp|Baroness Sharp]], the first woman in Britain to hold the position.

The episode entitled "[[The Moral Dimension]]", in which Hacker and his staff engage in the scheme of secretly consuming [[alcoholic beverage|alcohol]] on a trade mission to the fictional Islamic state of Qumran, was based on a real incident that took place in Pakistan, involving Callaghan and Donoughue, the latter of whom informed Jay and Lynn about the incident.<ref>{{cite episode|title=Yes Minister|series=Comedy Connections|series-link=Comedy Connections|airdate=25 July 2008|season=6}}</ref> Jay says that "I can't tell you where, I can't tell you when and I can't tell you who was involved; all I can tell you is that we knew that it had actually happened. That's why it was so funny. We couldn't think up things as funny as the real things that had happened."<ref name="lith">{{cite episode |title=Part 3: Modern Times |series=[[Omnibus (British TV programme)|Omnibus]]: Laughter in the House |credits = Prod. Paul Tilzey; Dir. Gabrielle Osrin |network=BBC |airdate=9 April 1999}}</ref> Media historian Andrew Crisell suggests that the show was "enriched by the viewers' suspicion that what they were watching was unhealthily close to real life."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Crisell |first=Andrew |title=An Introductory History of British Broadcasting |year=2002 |edition=2nd |publisher=Routledge |location= London |isbn=0-415-24792-6 |page=201}}</ref>

Fusing inspiration and invention, Lynn and Jay worked on the story "for anything from three days to two weeks," and only took "four mornings to write all the dialogue. After we wrote the episode, we would show it to some secret sources, always including somebody who was an expert on the subject in question. They would usually give us extra information which, because it was true, was usually funnier than anything we might have thought up."<ref name="lynnweb"/> Designers Valerie Warrender and Gloria Clayton were given access to the Cabinet Rooms and the State Drawing Rooms. For security purposes, the arrangements of the rooms were altered, and the views from the windows were never shown, to conceal the layout of the buildings.<ref name="gcbtv">{{Cite book|last=Cornell |first=Paul. |author2=Day, Martin|author3=Topping, Keith |title=The Guinness Book of Classic British TV |publisher=Guinness |year=1993 |pages=113–6|isbn= 0-85112-543-3|author-link2=Martin Day (writer) |author-link3=Keith Topping }}</ref> Lynn said in a 2007 interview that he and Jay had two main sources who worked at Number 10, who introduced them to others, and that they used lunches with their sources to get information. "Everyone in Government has an axe to grind, everyone wants their point of view expressed in the media, and the higher up they get the more indiscreet they become...They all leak like sieves, as long as they know they won't be identified."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brew |first=Simon |date=2007-12-06 |title=The Den of Geek interview: Jonathan Lynn |url=https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-den-of-geek-interview-jonathan-lynn/ |access-date=2025-03-18 |website=Den of Geek |language=en-US}}</ref>