The Players:Michael Palin - Ex Catholic Yorkshireman
Graham Chapman - Ex Muslim Yorkshireman
Terry Jones - Ex Jewish Yorkshireman
Eric Idle – Ex Hindu Yorkshireman
The Scene:
Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.
'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable book on gene centric evolution.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good rational book advancing scientific theory, eh, Josiah?
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
EX-CATHOLOIC YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here reading Richard Dawkins, eh?
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have a piece of ancient scripture.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
A piece of credulous ancient scripture.
EX-CATHOLIC YORKSHIREMAN:
Without rationality or logic.
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
Or reason.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
With an invisible God an ‘all.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh we were never able to even attempt to visualize Allāh.
EX-CATHOLIC YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to rehash a bunch of Jewish and Egyptian myths based on the Sun
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were deluded in those days, though we were uncritical.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were uncritical. My old Dad used to say to me, "Faith doesn't buy you truth, son".
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
EX-CATHOLIC YORKSHIREMAN:
I was more deluded and bigoted then when I vigorously denied the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but felt outraged when someone denied the existence of my one true God.
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
Bigoted! ‘E You wo’ moderate, I used to believe that when a person dies they re-live another life as someone else, and if they have bad karma they will be reborn into a lower caste or animal.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to believe in reincarnation. I used to believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share my beliefs would spend eternity in an infinite hell of suffering. And yet I considered my religion to be the most tolerant and loving. In spite of abusing children with threats of hell and eternal suffering.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used physically abuse our children as well as mentally. Despite believing that God created humans, we used to think that God's creation was morally imperfect and had to be corrected by manually and painfully lopping off end o’ boys cocks.
EX-CATHOLOIC YORKSHIREMAN:
Well I say one God, but I actually believed in 3 Gods according to the Christian doctrine of the trinity. So I believed that my God knocked up a young Jewish minx by appearing as a holy spirit so he could be born as a man an then get himsen killed on cross in our holy land in order to save us all from sin, but we’re all a bit fuzzy on how that actually works.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our holy land, had to go live in a desert and plan a jihad.
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a desert. We used to worship a river. We personified the river Ganges as our Goddess, Ganga
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Benevolent Goddess
EX-HINDU YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We had a jealous God who wasted the first 4 of his 10 commandments stating that he is god, that we should have no other gods, or make idols or do stuff on the Sabbath in preference to saying ought about rape, child abuse, slavery or equal rights.
EX-CATHOLIC YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course we had it irrational. We were told by the Pope to believe in the transubstantiation. So we believed that the bread and wine used in the Eucharist was converted to the actual body and blood of Christ which was then followed by the cannibalistic eating of the flesh and corporal drinking of the blood of Christ. Furthermore we believed that Christ was really, truly, and substantially present during the whole act.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
Sane. On the eve of Yom Kippur, we used to have to grab a live chicken by the shoulder blades an’ move it round our ‘ead three times whilst reciting “This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This rooster will go to its death, while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and to peace.” Then we used to believe our sins were transformed unto the chicken, and then we killed it.
EX-MUSLIM YORKSHIREMAN:
Right, we have a cleric who urged an audience including children and teenage boys to adopt a "jihad mentality" and undergo military training to fulfil their responsibility to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. He said that: "Even if you are hit by a cruise missile, the pain will feel like that of a mosquito bite." The compensation for death would be the right to "eat from the fruits of paradise" and the company of 72 virgins.
EX-CATHOLIC YORKSHIREMAN:
That’s nothing compared to the papal approved brutality and injustice we were able to dish out in the pre enlightened days when we could get away with it. We use to burn women as witches if they showed any signs of intelligence or rebellion against the Church. We used to force heretics to confess by using the most barbaric torture devices imaginable, including the heretics fork which did not penetrate any vital points, and thus suffering was prolonged and death was always nearly avoided.
EX-JEWISH YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the rational people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!
4 comments:
Pure genius again, Sir Crispian!
You had me ppffftting Coopers' Stout foam all over my keyboard at the first internal rendition of a Yiddish/Yorkshire accent, though. ;)
(Not many folk know that the original of this skit was penned by Tim Brooke-Taylor.)
Cheers Michael.
Yes, I can see the TBT humour in the original.
I wrote this blog a few weeks ago but didn’t post it as I wasn’t happy with it. I liked my idea of using the 4 Yorkshireman sketch to illustrate the every more absurd and atrocious facets of religion, but I struggled to make it fit.
I also felt that it didn’t fully transmit the ridiculousness of some of these beliefs as well as it might. But I gave up and posted it anyway. If anyone wants to improve on it, feel free.
Wonderful dialogue, but as a good Yorkshire lad from Leeds I must complain at the lack of references to ferrets, Tetley's or Michael Parkinson....might have a crack at a bit of a rewrite if you're amenable?
Where's the Ex-Scientologist Yorkshire-man in all this?
"You lot had it right easy! Back in my day, we had to hold tin two cans hooked up to a makeshift lie detector, and tell all our secrets, which the 'Church' recorded in case we left, so they could be used against us! Then we had to sit in Saunas for hours and consume ultra- high strength vitamin pills, and work for them, for next to nowt AND pay tens of thousands for courses, only to be told in the end that all our problems were down to a bunch of dead space alien parasitic souls that had been killed by an intergalactic alien overlord called Xenu! Now, where's me ferret got to?"
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