Sometimes the solution is worse than the problem

[peterbirks]

It's 8.20pm and I have just scrawled down things that I really ought to do before I go to bed (and, remember, my alarm goes off at 5.30am). In a matter of seconds I had scrawled down eight items, one of which was research, two of which were TV-related (including watching last week's Lost before this week's comes on the television, in an hour and a half's time) and five of which involved writing.

By my estimate, if I do all eight of the things that I really need to do (one of which is this, so I guess I'm getting somewhere) I would, in true Four Yorkshireman style, get to bed half an hour after I was scheduled to get up.

Not many people realize that the Four Yorkshiremen sketch is not a Monty Python invention. I believe (and I haven't Googled this, so I might be wrong) that it was from At Last The 1948 Show, a programme that I watched avidly as a child because, well, it was a children's programme, as was Do Not Adjust Your Set. Somehow I don't see Ant and Dec progressing as far in the world of pop cultural appreciation as the performers in these two shows did.

Anyway, I think the original Four Yorkshiremen were Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones, but it would be interesting to check up on it. I know that there remains some dispute on whose idea it was, but my guess would be that Marty Feldman was the original spark. It has his style.

I would later see this performed live, at an Amnesty International Show in the early 1980s. Rowan Atkinson took one of the parts. John Cleese and Michael Palin were two of the other three, I think. However, this was rather overshadowed by the joy of seeing Peter Cook in full flow (absolutely at his best as the Judge in the Jeremy Thorpe trial), and my first experiences of Alexei Sayle and Chris Langham.

Mel Brooks appreciated Feldman, who produced some series for the BBC that were up there with Spike Milligan when he was good (and much better than Spike Milligan when he was bad). One wonders why there hasn't been more written about Feldman (after all, there was a biopic of Kenneth Williams, and Feldman was probably a significantly more interesting figure).

Comments

[mrwarfrog.livejournal.com]

I think you are right, but I always believed one of the original 4 Yorkshiremen was Tim Brooke Taylor, who is also in the running for actually writing the sketch.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Geoff, I put TBT as one of the original Four Yorkshiremen (see above). He was also mooted (with Chapman) as one of the "inventors" of the sketch, but I suspect that he polished it up. Still, these things probably just emerge from drunken hazes on a Friday night in the pub. Perhaps we should just call it Jungian genius.

PJ

[mrwarfrog.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, so you did..

I think there was a program on the development of the Pythons a few weeks ago. Featured people like Ronnie's Corbett and Barker, David Frost, Barry Cryer etc. On it they showed the original sketch of the 4 Yorkshiremen and they did mention there was a haziness about who wrote the sketch.

I know Feldman was on it, I always considered him to be one of the greats. However, I always considered Milligan to be THE best when he was really good.

When people talk about Hancock being the greatest I can't agree. While he certainly did some good stuff, the type of comedy he did never really appealed.

The 2 unsung GREATS of British comedy are, imho, Barry Cryer and John Junkin who did so much of the writing for all of these people. The greatest comic in the world in nothing without someone behind him who is writing the stuff.

From Wikipedia:

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

which says:

The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch was originally written for the British television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show, and was co-written by the show's four writer-performers: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and Marty Feldman. The original performance of the sketch by the four creators is one of the surviving sketches from the program and can be seen on the At Last the 1948 Show DVD. Note that in the original sketch paying the mill-owner to come to work hadn't been invented yet.

The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch has been performed by Monty Python on their live shows, Live at Drury Lane (1974, no video recording available) and Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982). It was also performed with three Pythons - John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones - and Rowan Atkinson on The Secret Policeman's Ball (1981), an Amnesty International fund raising stage show.


The Live at the Hollywood Bowl version as it features Palin, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle and that famous Yorkshireman Terry Gilliam.

I have a 4 DVD set of all the Secret Policeman's Balls (from Amazon at something silly like £12) which has many masterpieces of Cook's (I Could Have Been A Judge, It's a Baby and just generally corpsing everyone), Rowan Atkinson's wonderful schoolteacher taking the register and a definitive Dead Parrot Sketch.

Mel Brooks used Marty Feldman in 2 or 3 of his films, starting with Young Frankenstein but the funniest thing he ever did was a half-hour thing of a golf round done for the Beeb in about 1969 or so, although I've no idea how to source that.

[lovemedo87.livejournal.com]

yeah! the original four yorkshiremen sketch was written for '48 show and I think those writers (cleese, chapman, feldman, and brooke taylor) wrote it...though now I guess it gets unfairly credited as a Python sketch. It seems no one is really sure EXACTLY who wrote it...it was obviously various people, but yeah it was written for '48 show. I'd agree maybe Marty had the original idea. He had a more working class background than the Pythons. I think it was just a sketch that everyone sort of built upon...since it is a sketch that builds and progresses as it goes on, and you could see how people could just add stuff.

Oh Marty Feldman's great. Are you talking about "The Lonliness of the Long Distance Golfer"? that sketch is hillarious. It's actually on "You Tube". I agree about Marty not having much on him and it annoys me too...I always like underrated people I guess. And yeah, from what I've read on him, his life would deff. be interesting to look into.

Sorry for the random comment...but the topic sparked my interest.

~angela~