As I remember it, the show was a St Patrick’s Day special. Mary was heading to Dublin to celebrate the saint’s national day, and Orange Lil ended up on the Enterprise instead of the train to Bangor.
For a generation, Jimmy Young’s affectionate caricatures emphasised our commonalities rather than our differences. And his plea to us all to “Stop Fightin”, preceded the peace process by decades.
Although most agreed with him, that plea fell on deaf ears.
Picture the scene as the Enterprise crossed the Boyne at Drogheda. “Isn’t it shockin’,” Orange Lil said as she gazed down at the not-so-green grassy slopes. “We won the battle, and they got the river.”
That sketch came to mind this week when I saw the image of the SDLP team at Stormont sitting around a committee table, and considering their future.
There’s no question that they “won the battle” to secure peace in Ireland, and right some of the wrongs stemming from the infamous Battle of the Boyne.
Yes, I know other players were involved, and the Good Friday Agreement would not have been possible without Adams and McGuinness, Trimble, Ervine, McWilliams and Morrice, Mowlam, Blair, Ahern, Clinton and the brilliant Senator George Mitchell.
But the agreement was envisioned and shaped by John Hume, and brought to pass in defiance of sceptics within nationalism and the British and Irish governments – and in the face of outright opposition from a unionist rump led by the Rev Ian Paisley.
If it were not for the SDLP, we would not have peace in our time.
Yet two decades on, Sinn Féin is in the ascendant, and SDLP leader Colum Eastwood is understudying Young’s regretful Lil.
Having lost key members of his assembly party, including his deputy – he was in front of the cameras on Monday accepting the SDLP did not have a mandate to keep its ministerial post. The party would be moving into opposition in the new assembly, he said.
This is what you would expect of a principled political party which recognises the primacy of the electorate.
We know that the SDLP is good in government. Its ministers have been conscientious and effective. The likelihood is that it will be good in opposition too. But we don’t yet know if it will even get the opportunity to hold ministers to account.
Unsurprisingly, the DUP - which always puts its own interests ahead of country - is showing contempt for the electorate by holding the assembly to ransom.
That contempt has been magnified by their leader’s decision to turn his back on those who voted for him in good faith last Thursday. He has put his Westminster salary and government patronages ahead of his responsibilities to voters. Donaldson is also running scared of a by-election he cannot be sure of winning.
The word Democratic in his party’s title is there for comic effect. The DUP is a serial destroyer of democracy and democratic values – and the refusal to form an executive is just the latest in a long line of self-serving political stunts.
The DUP position is against the tide of history. The failed statelet created as their political plaything is being dragged slowly into the 21st century. The croppies are no longer lying down; and Sinn Féin has a mandate to be first minister. That, in itself, is a remarkable achievement and they deserve congratulations.
Where then for the SDLP? Does it just shut up shop, its life’s work done?
Well, I think we had the answer on Monday, and it’s the right one. It is not going away you know.
Opposition might prove to be a gift for Eastwood. The best governments are those with the strongest oppositions. Ministers make better decisions when they know their feet will be held to the fire.
Opposition is a thankless task. But if the SDLP can bring the passion they show at Westminster to Stormont, we will be the better for it. Tough questions need to be asked across all departments – most notably health and education. Decision making needs to be scrutinised, and where it is found wanting, exposed.
And along the way, the party might just develop the attack lines which will give it an edge when next its candidates face the electorate.
If it is to remain a force in politics here, the SDLP must transcend its wounds, unite around a vision for this island, and articulate it in a way that resonates.
