Four Yorkshire Men

Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
We Were Poor (Four Yorkshiremen)

Yorkshireman I (Eric Idle):

Very passable, this, eh? Very passable.

All:

Ay, oh ay.

Yorkshireman II (Graham Chapman):

Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chasselet, eh, Josiah?

Yorkshireman III (Terry Jones):

Oh, you're right there, Obadiah.

Yorkshireman II:

Ay.

Yorkshireman I:

Who would have thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sitting here drinking Chateau de Chaselet, eh?

All:

Ay, ay.

Yorkshireman IV (Michael Palin)

Them days we were glad to have the price of a cup of tea.

Yorkshireman II:

Ay! A cup of cold tea!

Yorkshireman IV:

Ay!

Yorkshireman I:

Without milk or sugar!

Yorkshireman III:

Or tea!

Yorkshireman IV:

In a cracked cup and all.

Yorkshireman I:

Oh, we never used to have a cup! We used to have to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper!

Yorkshireman II:

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

Yorkshireman III:

But you know, we were happy in those days, although we were poor.

Yorkshireman IV:

Because we were poor!

Yorkshireman III:

Ay!

Yorkshireman IV:

My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't bring you happiness, son!"

Yorkshireman I:

He was right!

Yorkshireman IV:

Ay!

Yorkshireman I:

I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

Yorkshireman II:

House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

Yorkshireman III:

You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!

Yorkshireman IV:

Oh, we used to dream of living in a corridor! Would have 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!

Yorkshireman I:

Well, when I say "house", it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!

Yorkshireman II:

We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!

Yorkshireman III:

You were lucky to have a lake! There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!

Yorkshireman IV:

A cardboard box?

Yorkshireman III:

Ay!

Yorkshireman IV:

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 and clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down the 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 with his belt!

Yorkshireman II:

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 hot gravel, work twenty hours a day at mill, for two pence a month, come home, and dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

Yorkshireman III:

Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! Grab two bits of cold gravel, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for six pence every four years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife!

Yorkshireman I:

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 sulfuric 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!

Yorkshireman IV:

Oh, ay. And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!

All:

No, no they won't!