Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV Mini Series)

Return to the Circus (1979)

Alexander Knox: Control

Photos 

Quotes 

• Control : Listen, Jim, we've got to have codenames for them. D'you remember the nursery rhyme "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor"? Finish it.

  Jim Prideaux : "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief."

  Control : Percy Alleline, director of Operations: "Tinker".

  Jim Prideaux : "Tinker".

  Control : Bill Haydon, head of Personnel: "Tailor". Roy Bland, head of Iron Curtain Networks: "Soldier". We leave out "Sailor"; too much like "Tailor", could be misheard.

  Jim Prideaux : "Richman"?

  Control : Don't like it, sounds like police work: fraud, Swiss banks stuff. Toby Esterhase, top lamplighter, our exquisite head sleuth...

  Jim Prideaux : "Poorman"?

  [Control chuckles] 

  Control : Yes..."Poorman". And George Smiley, my devoted deputy: "Beggarman".

• Control : All I want from you, Jim is one. One word. Just ONE codename. If you have to scrawl it on the front door of the Embassy in Prague, or phone our resident hood and shout it in his ear before you go underground... if there's some kind of fumble and that's necessary... just give me that one word.

• Control : We have a rotten apple, Jim, and the maggots are eating up the Circus.

  Jim Prideaux : These people? One of these?

  Control : Why not? Are the British incapable of deception? We've turned members of other outfits: Russians, Poles, Czechs and the odd American.

• Control : One word will do, Jim. I'm almost there.