Columns starting with quotes give me that sudden instinctive cringe Millenials call ‘the ick’. One quote per year seems about doable, like allowing one exclamation mark every hundred thousand words in a novel. This year’s quote is from the UK political satire Yes, Minister. The urbane civil servant Sir Humphrey jousts each episode with the ambitious but bumbling politician Jim Hacker. Their audience for most of their exchanges is the beautifully bewildered Bernard, whose only role in life is to have things explained to him. Bernard is pure plot engineering, an exposition machine rarely seen in other sitcoms.  The quote…

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