"Only Failures Run Off To Be Expats" (Times)

They don't make 'em like that any more :D

The Players:

Michael Palin - First Yorkshireman;

Graham Chapman - Second Yorkshireman;

Terry Jones - Third Yorkshireman;

Eric Idle - Fourth 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.

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

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

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:

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

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

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

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

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

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:

Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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 YORKSHIREMAN:

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

ALL:

They won't!

.............................Quailty comedy :D

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I think you have me confused with someone who gives a sh1t.

uhhhh,to state the obvious,i dont have family and friends where i come from,obviously because they all left to look for greener pastures.

neither choice nor chance.

My thoughts are my own, but I doubt my Mum would agree with some of them.

I p*ssed myself laughing reading that. I could hear his sardonic tones as I was reading it. He's a very clever, witty guy.

I liked the reference to Spain, 'have you got a copy of The Telegraph? lol I still have to buy an English paper here, even though I know I could read it on the internet. It is just one of those things I miss, a brew and a paper.

Now, who was the lucky sod that lived in a drainpipe? By eck lad thee were lucky. We all lived in a show box. All 42 of us. We took it in turns to lick the side for nutrition.

My thoughts are my own, but I doubt my Mum would agree with some of them.

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I would live here all my life if i could.

Fantastic place.

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I think you have me confused with someone who gives a sh1t.

"First, home is not where you live; it’s where your friends are"

Hah Mr. Clarkson ... My friends are all here!

Exactly. When I asked if there was any way I could not pay full council tax on an empty flat that I couldn't sell, the lady asked me, straightfaced, whether I or my partner were registered drug addicts and whether either of us had pending court dates that were likely to be given custodial sentences. In which case, yes it would be reduced or free if more than 6 months in prison. She spoke as if this was a normal thing to say to someone. When I am in the UK I do get addicted to buying scratchcards, I wonder if that counts...

No wonder that those who are not fortunate like JC and live leafy suburbs and not so unfortunate to live in a council house have more reasons to go abroad..lol

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HE WHO DARES WINS

Reminds me of a Joke..

How do you get 20 Brits in a Phone Box.. Just tell them it a council house paid by the Government..

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HE WHO DARES WINS

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we don't have much money,no golds nor oils, live in a third world country but we have bountiful good manners and right conduct!

I am still proud to be a FILIPINO!!!

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third world country ?

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I think you have me confused with someone who gives a sh1t.

got your point.. but what i mean is "LOCAL" our own local...:)

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we don't have much money,no golds nor oils, live in a third world country but we have bountiful good manners and right conduct!

I am still proud to be a FILIPINO!!!

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Kathrina, you have got something there. Friendship here is certainly different, I'm not sure why because I know some amazing people who I count as very close friends but it is different to my friends from home.

I lived in a UK boarding school before coming here and i think it was similar in that everyone is transient and tended to have less intense friendships than in the real world. (among teachers I mean, not kids)

you can never have a true friend as an expant unless he is like your locals.

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we don't have much money,no golds nor oils, live in a third world country but we have bountiful good manners and right conduct!

I am still proud to be a FILIPINO!!!

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

lolz, nice Paul :)

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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

I think most of you missed the point. He's talking about emmigration - leaving one country to live, for the rest of your life, in another.

Short of meeting with a horrific traffic accident, most of us won't be here until we die. For a start we'll be kicked out at 60 when we can no longer visas.

In any case, this is just Clarkson's humour. Try reading one of his many best selling books and you will see that this is exactly the same sort of cynicism.

"You will sit there in a bar, in your stupid Hawaiian shirt,"

"I’d start by trying not to drink before 12. But then it’d be 10 and before I knew it I’d be pouring gin on my cornflakes"

I personally think my shirts are nice....:P

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I think you have me confused with someone who gives a sh1t.

I prefer Rum - makes the pineapple yoghurt more fruity - and you have an excuse if you have an accident on the way to work - "I am trolleyed officer now get out of my way"

- I took the blue pill and found myself alive in Qatar - wish I had taken the red and stayed in Europe

Aye young paul. Luxury!

You try telling that to the ex-pats of today. They won't believe you!

A room, Britexpat? Thou hadst room, thou lucky beggar? Why, when I were lad we lived in t' drainpipe, all 23 o' us, and had nowt to eat all day but overcooked tripe and Newcastle Brown. A room would ha' been luxury to us. But it didn't do us no 'arm. There's no better preparation for life on gin and cornflakes, there int.

ROFL. How'd he know that I put gin on my cornflakes?

You mean - F.I.L.T.H.K :)

Many years ago when the place was still a colony, I came across the use if the initials F.I.L.T.H. to represent "Failed in London Try Hong Kong."

Eee its great to move to Doha and have a house..

In England, we were lucky to live in a house! We had to all live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and were all huddled together in a corner for fear of falling!

Doha's luxury....

Always watch him in TOP GEAR and he do have a great sense of humour. And I find this article quite funny (though I'm not a Brit)...

As I said, there's no problem with you not finding it funny, but by pointing out the errors it implies that you didn't realise that it was a humorous piece to start with.

Gotta love it.

Oh and MissX you clearly have never been to any pub that is situated near a beach on Sydney on a sunny perfect day, otherwise you would truly appreciate the paragraph:

"It’s always the other way around. “My wife has left me. My children don’t want to know. The divorce cost a bundle and I don’t have any mates. So I shall move to Oz.” That’s why they call us whingeing poms. Because the poms they get do nothing else."

If everyone cared and nobody cried

If everyone loved and nobody lied

If everyone shared and swallowed their pride

Then we'd see the day when nobody died....Chad Kroeger

I assume by "get it", you mean the people who see the humour in the article. I personally recognised JC's attempt, but actually found nothing to be funny. Maybe it is funnier if you are a Brit? Anyway, I figure if I didn't find it humorous, then I'm sure there will be other people who didn't also, so commented on it from a realistic perspective.

MissX - you still don't get it. He's taking the p!ss, having a laugh, making a joke. In the UK we call it humour. Your entitled not to find it funny, but don't start picking it apart and pointing out the errors in it - the sweeping generalisations and factual inaccuracies are all deliberate.

deleted after user changed their comment

But who is anyone to judge that someone decided to move to another country because they are a failure. America is not the only country you can "grow" in, and maybe they saw even better opportunities.

And furthermore, I'd wager that you will be hard pressed to find anyone in the world who is totally satisfied with everything, especially their savings. Even the billionaires continue to invest and increase their fortune.

There a some cracking reader comments at the end of the article. A good mix of people who "get it" and people who don't (a bit like the comments on this thread).

This is my favourite so far;

"Alright if you are aboard the BBC gravy train and live in a mansion in the cotswolds, not so good if you live in Willsden and 12 latvians have just moved in next door."

Surely your comment backs up his theory .... "Seriously, no one has ever woken up and said: “I am completely happy. I have a lovely family, many friends, a great job and plenty of savings. So I shall move to Australia.”

This is hysterical! Thanks for sharing.

MissX - his pieces are generally satirical and definitely written with tongue firmly in cheek. I don't think any British expats would take this personally. Most would find it amusing.

And this is true of so many expats - "within a week, I’d be a raging alcoholic"!

Wow that was one of the most ridiculous pieces of writing ever. It was entirely opinion based, and makes sweeping judgements on large amounts of people. He never even pauses to consider any reason for moving from your homeland apart from the fact you're a failure. And apparently you can not prosper in any country but America. huh?

I am from Australia and work for a pool company. And I have to say the MAJORITY of customers who are installing swimming pools in their backyards, are from the United Kingdom. Yes, in an Australian city our main customers are foreign. I'd say those Britons made some pretty damn good decisions to move from their homeland, because they are now buying products that only the wealthier people can afford.

I love Clarkson, he is so articulate, I do find myself doing the whole "so glad I'm not in the UK" thing, oops, spilt my gin...

Love the following - "First, home is not where you live; it’s where your friends are. And second, within a week, I’d be a raging alcoholic. I’d start by trying not to drink before 12. But then it’d be 10 and before I knew it I’d be pouring gin on my cornflakes and my nose would be enormous and covered in what look like barnacles."