The Thick of It

The newly appointed Minister for Social Affairs, Hugh Abbot is on his way to a secondary school in Wiltshire to announce his new Snooper Squad policy. Unfortunately, he's ordered by Number Ten's communications' supremo, Malcolm Tucker to kill the policy stone dead. Hugh and his advisors have just forty minutes to come up with an extremely popular policy that costs nothing.

The Minister for Social Affairs, Hugh Abbot gets a very focused focus group in to tell him which one of two contradictory policies to go for. Meanwhile, Number Ten's enforcer, Malcolm Tucker is concerned the Minister is out of touch.

The Minister thinks his Housing Bill has been a success. Unfortunately, the man at Number Ten thinks an empty flat in London could pose a problem. Someone's going to have to resign. Friendly journalist Angela Heaney has turned cold; she intends to portray a rather unattractive image of the Minister. Can Tucker prevent things from turning ugly?

Abbot visits a factory, where he is harangued by a woman employee who wants to make a public point about the treatment of her ailing mother. The whole incident is captured by TV cameras and it is up to Malcolm Tucker to try and stop ITN running the footage.

Malcolm makes things difficult when an outside adviser arrives to inspect all the departments, and enlists his colleagues' help in getting rid of him. Hugh is upset to discover that everybody is aware the Prime Minister's wife does not like him - a blow to his plans for a policy announcement that will impress her husband.

The internal e-mail system goes down as Hugh is trying to send an expletive-littered missive to Glenn about their dislike of educational adviser Roy Smedley. He ends up using his colleague's web-based address - and accidentally forwards it to an eight-year-old girl.