An ‘ouse? We only had a hole in’t ground covered by torn canvas
FORE RUNNER of Monty Python, At Last The 1948 Show (actually broadcast in 1967) starred Graham Chapman and John Cleese, as well as Tim BrookeTaylor (soon to be a Goodie), Marty Feldman (soon to be a movie star) and Aimi MacDonald... always known as The Lovely Aimi MacDonald. It was she who coined the phrase ‘And now for something completely different’, later the Pythons’ catchphrase. The Four Yorkshiremen sketch became a Python favourite, too. FOUR Yorkshiremen in white dinner jackets are at a table, smoking cigars and drinking wine served by a bow-tied waiter and reminiscing about their humble roots. FIRST YORKSHIREMAN (FELDMAN): Aye, very passable, not bad at all. THIRD YORKSHIREMAN (CHAPMAN): Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chasselas, eh, Josiah? FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN (BROOKETAYLOR): Aye, you’re right there, Obadiah, dead right. SECOND YORKSHIREMAN (CLEESE): Who’d have thought 40 years ago we’d all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Chasselas, eh? FIRST: Aye, we’d a’ been glad of the price of a cup of tea then. THIRD: Aye, a cup of cold tea. ALL: Aye. SECOND: Without milk or sugar.
FOURTH: Aye, but you know, I often think we were happier then, although we were poor.
FIRST: Because we were poor. My old Dad said to me, he said: ‘Money won’t bring you happiness, son’.
SECOND: He was right. I was happier then and I had nothing. We used to live in a tiny tumbledown old house with great ’oles in’t roof.
THIRD: ’Ouse! You were lucky to ’ave a ’ouse! We used to live in one room, 26 of us, all there, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and we were all huddled in one corner for fear of falling. FOURTH: Room! You were lucky to ’ave a room! We used to ’ave to live in t’corridor! FIRST: Corridor! Oh, I used to dream of living in a corridor! That would have been a palace to us. We used to live in a water tank on t’rubbish tip. Aye. Every morning we’d be woke up by ’aving a load of rotting fish dumped on us! ’ouse? Huh!
SECOND: Well, when I said ’ouse’, I mean it were only hole in’t ground covered by a couple of foot of torn canvas, but it were a house to us.
THIRD: Oh, well, we were evicted from our hole in the ground; we ’ad to go and live in the lake.
FOURTH: Eh, you were lucky to have a lake! There were over 150 of us living in a small shoebox in’t middle o’ road. FIRST: Cardboard box?
FOURTH: Aye. FIRST: Aye, you were lucky! We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank. Aye. Every mornin’, we’d ’ave to get up at six, clean out rolled-up newspaper, eat a crust of stale bread then we’d ’ave to work 14 hours at mill, day-in, day-out, for sixpence a week. Aye and then when we’d come home, Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt.
THIRD: Luxury. We used to get up at three, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, then we’d work in’t mill for 20 hours for tuppence a month, then we’d come home and Dad would beat us about the ’ead and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
FOURTH: Paradise. We had it tough. I used to ’ave to get out of shoebox at midnight, lick road clean, eat a couple of bits of coal gravel, work 2 hours a day at mill for a penny every four years and when we got home, Dad used to slice us in ’alf wi’ a bread knife.
SECOND: Right! We used to get up in’t morning at half past ten at night, ’alf an hour before we’d gone to bed, eat a lump o’ poison, work 29 hours a day at mill for ’alfpenny a lifetime, come home and each night Dad would strangle us and dance about on our graves.
FIRST: Aye, and you try and tell that to the young people of today . . . will they believe you? SECOND, THIRD & FOURTH: NO!