Monty Python’s iconic Four Yorkshiremen sketch has been doing the rounds following Damian Green’s comments about sewage on ITV.
The Tory MP argued that attitudes towards sewage dumping have changed in recent years, with people less inclined to want to swim in discharges than they used to be.
Speaking to Anushka Asthana on ITV he said: “I remember as a child in South Wales swimming in sewage.
“It was sort of regarded as acceptable.”
The comments bear a remarkable resemblance to the Four Yorkshiremen sketch that parodies nostalgic conversations about humble beginnings or difficult childhoods.
As the conversation progresses they try to outdo one another, and their accounts of deprived childhoods become increasingly absurd.
Taking to Twitter, professor Brian Cox mimicked the show, posting:
“You were lucky. 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 sulphuric 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.
“And you try and tell the young people of today that … they won’t believe you.”
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