08 March 2024

The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch



John Cleese and Graham Chapman (before their Monty Python fame), with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman, lampooning the stereotypical "rich people claiming they were happier when they were poor."

One of my favorite comedy bits of all time - and one that is especially relevant in times of economic uncertainty.   I had posted this a long time ago, but the video was pulled from YouTube - so watch it now, because it may not stay up long.

Reposted from 2010 because that old video was in fact taken down a second time, but a Britbox version is now available on YouTube, so this may stay up for a while.

Reposted for 2024 because we need laughs now more than ever.

20 comments:

  1. Love it! One of my favorites... Thanks Stan!

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  2. Great sketch. This video is missing the best part at the end though...

    "But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'."

    "Nope, nope"

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  3. Python did the sketch (with Palin, Chapman, Idle and Jones) in "Live at the Hollywood Bowl":

    https://youtu.be/26ZDB9h7BLY

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  4. Four Yorkshiremen but only two Corinthians.

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  5. When I were a lad we could only afford three Yorkshiremen. An' one o' them were from Hull.

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  6. We could not afford any kind of Yorkshiremen - all we had was New Yorkers.

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    1. :-) Can someone continue the thread?

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    2. New Yorkers, eh ? That's a posh life. All we had was a single Old Yorker and he wasn't real either - he was half a garden gnome from Edison, NJ.

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    3. Edison? Yes, I lived in New Jersey, but it wasn't in any town named after a famous inventor. My town was named after someone so unknown, we didn't even know who it was or what the name was.

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    4. NAMES? You 'ad NAMES?! That's practically royalty! We wuz grateful to use a system o' grunts and crude gestures

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    5. Grunts and crude gestures? Oi, that's practically "The King's Speech". We just had ear-wiggling as a higher form of communication; the more eloquent could maybe wrinkle an nostril of two. Eye-blinking'? We had none of that.

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    6. 🕮⮵⟡🖂🕆🡭● ⮹⇦🢭⬃⮙🙗🙗★! ⑤🕭🔾"ॐ %☼☟🖴☟, 🕯🕮🖫✇

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    7. At least you had hieroglyphics. We just had sticks with which we could only make marks in the mud, and only up-down or left-right, and never crossing each other. And when the dry season came, oi, we couldn't write anything at all, what with everything being dry and dusty.

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    8. Tha's lucky tha 'ad mud. We didn't even have ground. We 'ad to 'over in mid-air

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    9. Mid-air? At least you had clouds to rest on, once in a while. We didn't even have clouds.

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  7. NEW York?! Oh, now there's fancy. We didn't 'ave anything new. Our proudest possession was fourth 'and, an' we kept that for Sunday best.

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    1. You had a Sunday best! The closest we 'ad to that was a second-'and 'alf an hour every other Saturday and that was stolen from us by Daylight Savings Time.

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  8. I hate to break the thread and you've probably seen this already but here's a more recent version with some rather surprising guests. I'm sorry I couldn't find a better version where you can see one especially well-known actor never breaking character.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lb-2VaJYPw

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    1. That is certainly worth adding. Thanks for the link.

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  9. There was a sketch show on BBC Sounds Radio 4, recently (thoroughly recommended to followers of TYWKIWDBI) that did a brilliant reversal. It had four older people reminiscing about the past with first one saying 'In my day, we could see a doctor on the same day you were ill,' followed by 'You think that's good. We got paid to go to unverisity,' and a third went with 'That's nothing. In my day, a teacher could afford to buy a house with their first job!'. It finished, of course, with the line: 'You try and tell young people today and they won't believe you!'

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