Four Yorkshiremen sketch
marty feldman
['evelyn waugh', 'michael ondaatje', 'susan cooper', 'robert muchamore', 'natsuki takaya', 'jeff lindsay', 'louis couperus', 'doug naylor', 'kalhana', 'tamora pierce', 'thomas kyd', 'giovanni boccaccio', 'president lincoln', 'mario puzo', 'barbara mertz', 'andrew lang', 'grimms', 'arthur sullivan', 'ueda akinari', 'thomas browne', 'charles bertram', 'david weinberger', 'cartoon books', 'juanjo guarnido', 'vyasa', 'pope john paul ii', 'joe haldeman', 'plath', 'carl linnaeus', 'mayu shinjo', 'martin luther', 'bernard cornwell', 'vertov', 'zoroaster', 'ring lardner', 'caleb carr', 'ed mcbain', 'gore vidal', 'parabasis', 'lois mcmaster bujold', 'american psychiatric association', 'lao she', 'dalton trumbo', 'ferdowsi', 'edwin abbott abbott', 'rambam', 'melanie rawn', 'wendy wasserstein', 'ilango adigal', 'fletcher pratt', 'sumner locke elliott', 'colette', 'jacques derrida', 'john norman', 'zarathustra', 'lorenz hart', 'anant pai', 'stephen king', 'ansky', 'stephen briggs', 'tom eyen', 'jorge luis borges', 'pope alexander vi', 'david rabe', 'fernando de rojas', 'venerable bede', 'harlan ellison', 'tennessee williams', 'hermann hesse', 'jack higgins', 'alonso de ercilla', 'zimmermann', 'christopher marlowe', 'schumann', 'laura hillenbrand', 'frances hodgson burnett', 'yukio mishima', 'rudyard kipling', 'marco polo', 'sam shepard', 'plotinus', 'apple', 'theophanes', 'fred gipson', 'gustav hasford', 'ricky gervais', 'kautilya', 'conn iggulden', 'max beerbohm', 'dorothy sayers', 'world health organization', 'prophet muhammad', 'lee hall', 'joe melson', 'nick arnold', 'nanae chrono', 'michael swanwick', 'graham greene', 'alice paul']
Four Yorkshiremen sketch
The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch is a parody of nostalgic conversations about humble beginnings or difficult childhoods. Four Yorkshiremen reminisce about their upbringing, and as the conversation progresses, they try to outdo one another, their accounts of deprived childhoods becoming increasingly absurd. The sketch was originally written and performed for the 1967 British television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show by the show's four writer-performers: Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. Barry Cryer is the wine waiter in the original performance and may have contributed to the writing. A near derivative of the sketch appears in the BBC Radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again Series 7, Episode 5 on 9 February 1969, in which the cast, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, David Hatch, in the guise of old buffers at a gentlemen's club, employ the same trope of out-doing each other for hardship, this time in the context of how far and how slowly they had to walk to get to various places in former days. It even ends with the same payoff line "...and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you..." The original performance of the sketch by the four creators is one of the surviving sketches from the programme and can be seen on the At Last the 1948 Show DVD.