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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).
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).
