Monty Python’s Flying Circus —
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«Four Yorkshiremen»
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The Players:
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Michael Palin — First Yorkshireman;
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Graham Chapman — Second Yorkshireman;
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Terry Jones — Third Yorkshireman;
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Eric Idle — Fourth Yorkshireman;
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The Scene:
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Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort
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'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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You’re right there, Obadiah
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Who’d have thought thirty year ago we’d all be sittin' here drinking Château de
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Chasselas, eh?
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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A cup o' cold tea
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Without milk or sugar
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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Or tea
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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In a cracked cup, an' all
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Oh, we never had a cup. |
We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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Because we were poor. |
My old Dad used to say to me, «Money doesn’t buy you
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happiness, son»
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Aye, 'e was right
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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Aye, 'e was
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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I was happier then and I had nothin'. |
We used to live in this tiny old house
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with great big holes in the roof
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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House! |
You were lucky to live in a house! |
We used to live in one room,
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all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing,
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and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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Eh, you were lucky to have a room! |
We used to have to live in t' corridor!
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! |
Would ha' been a palace to us.
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We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. |
We got woke up every
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morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! |
House? |
Huh
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of
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tarpaulin, but it was a house to us
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; |
we 'ad to go and live in a lake
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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You were lucky to have a lake! |
There were a hundred and fifty of us living in
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t' shoebox in t' middle o' road
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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Cardboard box?
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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Aye
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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You were lucky. |
We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank.
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We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag,
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eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day,
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week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would
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thrash us to sleep wi' his belt
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SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
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Luxury. |
We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning,
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clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for
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tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken
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bottle, if we were lucky!
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THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
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Well, of course, we had it tough. |
We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at
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twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. |
We had two bits of
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cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four
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years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife
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FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
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Right. |
I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour
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before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a
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day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work,
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and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on
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our graves singing Hallelujah
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
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And you try and tell the young people of today that … they won’t believe you
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ALL:
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They won’t! |