The Thick of It (TV Series)

Episode #2.3 (2005)

Joanna Scanlan: Terri Coverley

Quotes 

• Malcolm Tucker : Right, Terri, you're gonna give a press conference in 90 minutes and you're gonna apologise. There's your statement, learn it.

  Terri Coverley : I... I organize the press conferences, I don't give them.

  Malcolm Tucker : God, right, ok well, seen as you're not used to this, I'll go through it for you, ok? What happens at a press conference is this - a bunch of press people are gonna appear, they got things called cameras and microphones and mobile phones and hangovers and bad breath. Then you are gonna walk out and you're gonna read from what we call a "prepared statement". In that you will say "I'm really fucking sorry for sounding like a hairy arsed docker after twelve pints. I promise that I will never call an 8 year old girl a cunt again. Can we now just draw a line over this and fucking move on? Thank you". Everybody goes home and then we wait and we see what happens. The best case is you get keep your job, although you will forever be known as The Sweary Woman of Whitehall.

• Terri Coverley : Did you send an e-mail this morning, about me, calling me a cunt?

  Oliver Reeder : No! No, I never use that word, let alone about you, no, absolutely, I won't use it until, you know, it's been fully normalized and has no further assosiation with the... female twat.

• Hugh Abbott : Just grow up, Terri!

  Terri Coverley : You should be the one that's doing the growing up!

  Hugh Abbott : I am a fucking grown-up, thank you!

  Terri Coverley : You could have fooled me, Hugh!

  Hugh Abbott : Glenn's son could have fooled you! No offence, Glenn. I'm sorry.

• Hugh Abbott : [entering the new offices]  Bit too light and airy for my liking.

  [points at some backless, bench-like purple sofas] 

  Hugh Abbott : Ooh, and... these are awful. Do we have to have those? They look like Alicia's Barbie furniture

  Terri Coverley : Do you think they match?

  Hugh Abbott : Well, they can't... Not if you're going to wear that dress. One of them's going to have to go and I'd rather it was the sofas.

• Oliver Reeder : [standing several floors up in the atrium of their new building, looking down]  Good spot for a suicide, this, I would think. Good long drop, appreciate audience.

  Robyn Murdoch : What if you just broke your back? You know... you'd be paralysed for life and you'd still be depressed about the thing that was depressing you in the first place.

  Terri Coverley : What are these, erm, hangy-down things?

  Oliver Reeder : Oh, they're acoustic baffles. They stop it get too echoey, innit.

  Robyn Murdoch : So when you're breaking your back, nobody can hear you screaming?

  Oliver Reeder : Well, that is the kind of attention to detail that you get in a PFI building

  Malcolm Tucker : [shouting up from the lobby]  HEY! GET BACK TO WORK, ALL OF YOU!