Four Yorkshiremen - Rowan Atkinson, Monty Python

Monty Python’s Flying Circus —

«Four Yorkshiremen»

The Players:

Michael Palin — First Yorkshireman;

Graham Chapman — Second Yorkshireman;

Terry Jones — Third Yorkshireman;

Eric Idle — Fourth Yorkshireman;

The Scene:

Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort

'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

You’re right there, Obadiah

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Who’d have thought thirty year ago we’d all be sittin' here drinking Château de

Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

A cup o' cold tea

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Without milk or sugar

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Or tea

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

In a cracked cup, an' all

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Oh, we never had a cup.

We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Because we were poor.

My old Dad used to say to me, «Money doesn’t buy you

happiness, son»

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye, 'e was right

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye, 'e was

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

I was happier then and I had nothin'.

We used to live in this tiny old house

with great big holes in the roof

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

House!

You were lucky to live in a house!

We used to live in one room,

all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing,

and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Eh, you were lucky to have a room!

We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor!

Would ha' been a palace to us.

We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip.

We got woke up every

morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us!

House?

Huh

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of

tarpaulin, but it was a house to us

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground;

we 'ad to go and live in a lake

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

You were lucky to have a lake!

There were a hundred and fifty of us living in

t' shoebox in t' middle o' road

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

You were lucky.

We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank.

We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag,

eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day,

week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would

thrash us to sleep wi' his belt

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

Luxury.

We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning,

clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for

tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken

bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Well, of course, we had it tough.

We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at

twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue.

We had two bits of

cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four

years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Right.

I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour

before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a

day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work,

and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on

our graves singing Hallelujah

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

And you try and tell the young people of today that … they won’t believe you

ALL:

They won’t!