I recently watched a DVD video for the Asian Tsunami called “The best comedy DVD in the world”. Although the DVD can never really deliver the “best” comedy dvd in the world – but it did come close with a few Richard Pryor sketches…
But the best bit of the DVD was the showing of the famous “Four Yorkshiremen sketch” from the hit show At Last the 1948 Show which starred such lumaries as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
The sketch involves four Yorkshiremen who compare their difficult childhood upbringing, each trying to outdo each other in every respect with a game of perpetual one-upmanship which turns to obvious and blatant hyperbole by the end of the sketch.
A game called Yorkshiremen sprung from this sketch.
Here is the full sketch in full,
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Chteau 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 Chteau 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!
Resources:
Four Yorkshiremen Sketch
