A Comedy Sketch about 'Your mum'

In the UK, especially amongst young people, it is common to make a insulting joke starting with the phrase: "your mum is so poor she...".

Here is a comedy sketch and transcript about a woman trying to understand this type of joke (warning: it gets a bit rude at the end!):

A: What did Simon mean earlier when he said that thing about my mum and her fingers?

B: Oh that, that was a joke

A: Was it?

B: Yes your mum is so poor when she goes to KFC she licks other people’s fingers. Course it was

A: Oh

B: You know its like saying: your mum is so poor she can’t pay attention

A: Right

B: Or your mum is so poor she…

A: Shops at Sainsbury’s

B: No

A: Tesco

B: No

A: Asda

B: No

A: No But that’s where poor people shop

B: Yes I know it is

A: You told me you can get a can of beans for eight pence in Asda. I wonder if they know about that in Africa

B: You’re missing the point

A: Of course Africans can grow their own beans

B: No the point is not to be so literal. You can’t say your mum is so poor she shops in Asda, because that’s a fact

A: No it isn’t. My mum shops in Waitrose. Although if she’s got the car she goes to….

B: I don’t care where she shops. Look you are supposed to say something that clearly isn’t true.

A: Like

B: Like: your mum is so poor when she kicks cans down the street that’s her moving house and don’t say it isn’t true because I know it isn’t true, but that’s what makes it funny

A: Oh please just do it one more time and I swear I’ll get it

B: Ok Your mum is so poor she buys holes with socks in them

A: Well your mum smells of fish, wets herself and has a fanny like a bucket…was that funny?

B: For different reasons, yes it was

A: Ah, you know what they say, nothing’s so funny as the truth

B: (sigh)

A: What?! Well at least she doesn’t lick other peoples fingers..their faces yes but not their fingers.

Housing in the UK (with audio)

The United Kingdom has the third highest population density in Europe after the Netherlands and Belgium, and England alone is higher than all three. Housing tends to be smaller and more closely packed than in other countries, particularly compared to North America.

Ever since the Great Fire of London, the British have had a particular love of the terraced house: a house that is one of a row of identical houses situated side by side and sharing common walls (see photo). The majority of surviving housing built before 1914 is of this type, and therefore is very common in inner residential areas. In the twentieth century the process of suburbanisation led to a spread of semi-detached and detached housing (houses sharing just one or no common walls). After the second world war, public housing was hugely expanded to create a large number of council estates, although the majority of these have since been purchased by their tenants. Although many British people live in flats, it is commonly argued that they are less comfortable with this form of living than their European neighbours. This is not the case in Scotland, where many more people live in this type of housing.

Song with Lyrics

Phoebe Cates, by The Sads



I'm sorry but in '98 I gave my heart away
I gave my heart away to Phoebe Cates circa '83
It was a rough landing, it was a very rough landing
But any landing from which you walk away is a good
landing

I've been here all day long
Singing a lovesick song
It may be right and it may be wrong
It may be right I think it's wrong

I'm sorry but the very next day I gave my arm away
I gave the thing away come who will, come who may
It was a rough landing, it was a very rough landing
But any landing from which you walk away is a good
landing

I've been here all day long
Singing a lovesick song
It may be right and it may be wrong
It may be right I think it's wrong

A Pronunciation Poem (with audio)

English pronunciation can be difficult because English is definitely not a phonetic language. I have recorded the following poem for you (which was quite tricky)



I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

Monty Python: 4 Yorkshiremen

The Four Yorskiremen

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND:
A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH:
Without milk or sugar.

THIRD:
Or tea.

FIRST:
In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH:
Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST:
Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST:
Cardboard box?

THIRD:
Aye.

FIRST:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH:
Right. 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.

FIRST:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL:
They won't!

Monty Python: Dead Parrot Sketch

The Pet Shoppe

Below is the Parrot Sketch with full transcript and definitions of some of the vocabulary used (see bottom)

A customer enters a pet shop.

Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The owner does not respond.)

C: 'Ello, Miss?

Owner: What do you mean "miss"?

C: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

O: Sorry, we're closin' for lunch.

C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

O: Oh yes, the Norwegian Blue. What's wrong with it?

C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!

O: Nah, nah, it's resting, look!.

C: Look, my lad, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

O: No no it's not dead, it's restin'!

C: Restin'?

O: Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, beautiful plumage, idn'it?

C: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.

O: Nah, nah it's resting!

C: All right then, if it's restin', I'll wake it up!

(shouting at the cage)

'Ello, Polly! I've got a nice cuttle fish for you when you wake up, Polly Parrot...
(owner hits the cage)

O: There, it moved!

C: No, it didn't, that was you pushing the cage!

O: I did not!!

C: Yes, you did!

(takes parrot out of the cage yelling at the parrot)

C: 'ELLO POLLY!!!!! POLLLLLLYYY!!!

(thumps its head on the counter)

C: POLLY PARROT, WAKE UP!!

(thumps its head on the counter, again, and shakes it)

C: POLLY!!!

.(throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor)

C: Now that's what I call a dead parrot.

O: Nah, no it's stunned!

C: Look, my lad, I've 'ad just about enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I bought it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out after a long squawk.

O: Well, it's probably pining for the fjords.

C: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I got it home?

O: The Norwegian Blue prefers kippin' on it's back! It's a beautiful bird, lovely plumage! id'nit, squire?

C: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot, and I discovered that the only reason it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

O: Well, o'course it was nailed there, otherwise it would have nuzzled up to those bars, and VOOM!

C: Look matey
(picks up parrot)

C: This parrot wouldn't "voom" if I put four thousand volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!

O: It's not! It's pining!

C: It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet it's maker! This is a late parrot.

It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it'd be pushing up the daisies!

Its run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibile!

THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

(pause)

O: Well, I'd better replace it, then.

C: If you want anything done in this country you've gotta complain until you're blue in the mouth

(O takes a quick peek behind the counter)

O: Sorry guv, we're right out of parrots.

C: I see. I see, I get the picture.

O: I got a slug.

(pause)

C: Does it talk?

O: Not really, no.

C: Well it's scarcely a replacement is it?

O: I'll tell you what, tell you what, if you go to my brother's pet shop in Bolton, he'll replace your parrot for you.

C: Bolton, eh? Alright

(The customer leaves.)

(The customer enters the same pet shop. The owner has on a false moustache.)

C: Excuse me. This is Bolton, is it?

O: (with a fake moustache) No, it's Ipswich.

C: (looking at the camera) That's inter-city rail for you.

(The customer goes to the train station.)

(He addresses a man standing behind a desk marked "Complaints".)

C: I wish to make a complaint.

Attendant: I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS JOB, YOU KNOW!!!

C: I beg your pardon...?

A: I'm a qualified brain surgeon! I only do this because I like being my own boss!

C: Excuse me, this is irrelevant, isn't it?

A: Yeah, well it's not easy to pad these to minutes.

C: Well, I wish to make a complaint. I got on the Bolton train and found myself deposited here in Ipswich.

A: Nah, this is Bolton.

C: (to the camera) The pet shop owner's brother was lying!!

A: Well, you can't blame British Rail for that.

C: If this is Bolton, I shall return to the pet shop!

(He does.)

C: I understand this IS Bolton.

O: (still with the fake mustache) Yeah?

C: Well, you told me it was Ipswitch!

O: ...It was a pun.

C: (pause) A PUN?!?

O: Nah, no...not a pun...What's the other thing that reads the same backwards as forwards?

C: (Long pause) A palindrome...?

O: Yeah,...yeah.

C: It's not a palindrome! The palindrome of "Bolton" would be "Notlob"!! It don't work!!

O: Look, what do you want?

C: No I'm sorry, I'm not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any further as I think this is getting too silly!

Sergeant-Major: Quite agree, quite agree, silly, silly, silly,...Right, get on with it...get on withit!!


Vocabulary

lad: a boy or youth
matey: a friend or a form of address
plumage: the covering of feathers on a bird
stunned: filled with the emotional impact of overwhelming surprise or shock
deceased: no longer living; dead.
shagged out: very tired
squawk: a harsh abrupt scream, a loud screech (the noise a parrot makes)
to pine: to have a nostalgic desire
to nuzzle up: to push up to or rub someone or something with the nose
voom: a noise that something makes when it moves very fast
demised/passed on: dead
a stiff: a dead person
pushing up the daisies: phrase meaning that he is dead
I get the picture: I understand the situation
a slug: it is similar to a snail, but without the shell
a pun: a humorous play on words