Fictional Biography
Hacker was an academic political researcher, polytechnic lecturer and editor of a newspaper, Reform, before entering Parliament, where he apparently spent a good deal of time in Opposition and served as Shadow Minister of Agriculture before his party won an election in 1979. In Yes Minister he is the Minister for the (fictitious) Ministry of Administrative Affairs and a Cabinet minister. He is joined by the ministry's Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, who as a senior civil servant tries to control the ministry and the minister himself, and also by his Principal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley. Hacker received his degree, a third, from the London School of Economics, and is frequently derided for this by the Oxford-educated Sir Humphrey. He and his wife, Annie, have one daughter, Lucy, a sociology student at the University of Sussex who plays a major role in the first series episode "The Right to Know".
Hacker gains an honorary doctorate from Baillie College, Oxford (a possible reference to Balliol College), in the second series episode "Doing the Honours". During the Christmas special episode, "Party Games", he is Party Chair, which gives him the opportunity — with the help of Sir Humphrey and other civil servants acting in their own interests — to become Prime Minister in 1985.
Yes, Prime Minister follows on from this, with Hacker and Sir Humphrey raised to the highest levels in British government: Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary respectively. Bernard remains Hacker's Principal Private Secretary throughout.
An obituary for Hacker, written by his creators, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, appears in Politico's Book of the Dead. The entry gives Hacker the same dates of birth and death as Paul Eddington, the actor who portrayed him. (These dates make Hacker 53 at the time of broadcast of the episode "Open Government", in which the character was described by a journalist as "in his late forties": either the episode is set a few years earlier, the journalist was mistaken, or Hacker had been lying about his age.) Although the series itself ends with Hacker still Prime Minister, this obituary mentions his later career as a member of the House of Lords. After his death, a college is named after him (Hacker College, Oxford).
Read more about this topic: Jim Hacker
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