Talk:Jim Hacker

Episode guide

[1] has an episode guide which will probably very useful for getting info about individual episodes. I got the name of the doctorate episode there. Tim! (talk) 19:31, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I have all the episodes on DVD and have watched them oodles of times but I can never remember what comes up in the episodes... David.

There's a spoof obituary for Hacker in 'Politico's Book of the Dead' which I will scour for additional information. David | Talk 11:23, 25 August 2005 (UTC) (so you're name's not Bruce then? That's going to cause a bit of confusion)

Hacker's wife's name

I believe that Hacker's wife was named Annie, not Ann? The cast list at IMBD seems to support this: [2] Supermagle

Mixing detail on character and actor

I just wanted to reiterate that I think mixing fiction about James Hacker with facts about Paul Eddington is unnecessarily confusing and gives the article an unencyclopedic tone. I assume I'm in the minority on this, but I won't be editing this article any further. --Mrwojo 17:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it's not so much a fact vs. fiction issue - if it were I'd unhesitatingly agree with you - as a canon vs noncanon issue. That is, in the TV series itself there's no reference to their birth and death dates, but there apparently is in the obituary Politico's Book of the Dead. It's not the series per se, but it is apparently written by the series' writers, so I think that's close enough to canon for government work... It's probably just worth making clear the source of each bit of information; I'll try and do something with this. --Zeborah 22:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Your changes are an improvement. I'm not a fan of using the standard formatting for biographies (bold name followed by birth/death in parentheses) for fictional characters. I find this case (and Humphrey Appleby's) especially notable because it uses dates from the real person most closely associated with the character. I also prefer mentioning the actor's name in the first screenshot they appear in. (The only other point was the "he does not necessarily share aspects of his character" sentence, which you've clarified.) --Mrwojo 02:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Article location

Surely Jim Hacker is how he's known best? If there are no objections I'll move the page in 48 hours. Timrollpickering 17:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

<checks DVDs> Yes, you're right. A move sounds good - I presume you'll leave James Hacker as a redirect? --Zeborah 23:57, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes - it's automatic as part of the move. Timrollpickering 00:06, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Past tense

Is past tense appropriate here? Granted, Paul Eddington is dead, but I'm not sure "was" is the appropriate tense for the character when you can turn on televisions worldwide and see him. --Steven Fisher (talk) 15:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Children

Jim Hacker has more children then one daughter. Because in one episode he speaks of his children, plural and not child. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.119.252.76 (talk) 15:04, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hacker's political party

I've removed the following section:

The show was set during the 1980s throughout which the Conservative Party was in government, therefore suggesting Hacker is a Conservative. However, Hacker is MP for Birmingham East, and in one episode meets a fellow party MP for Liverpool South-West. While these are both fictional constituencies, they are both located in cities which would almost universally be expected to return Labour MPs.

This section is speculation. However, I would say both of these suggestions are wide of the mark. Firstly, the pilot episode was written before the 1979 general election, and so there was a Labour government at the time. Secondly, while after 1997 Birmingham has been all-Labour, and after 1983 Liverpool has been entirely non-Conservative, this was not the case in the early 1980s. There were two Conservative MPs out of eight in Liverpool between 1979 and 1983 (Garston and Wavertree both being in the South-West of the city, broadly) and five Conservative MPs out of twelve in Birmingham in the same period. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Explicated - is this just to annoy Jim Hacker? Please can we have "stated" or even "given". Blue painted (talk) 11:59, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Dates

I don't know why Paul Eddington's dates of birth and death are given. This is a fictional character! Besides, Jim Hacker has re-surfaced in the 2010 stage show. IXIA (talk) 17:29, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

It's because these dates are given for the character in The Politico's Book of the Dead --Guinness040ST (talk) 17:24, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

A subliminal lesson in the Abjad?

It might just be that Jim Hacker was derived from the 3 similar Arabic characters Jeem, Ha, Kha found in that order in the abjad.

58.173.149.148 (talk) 12:09, 21 February 2019 (UTC) Ian Ison