(Not so) Great speeches
The Guardian have selected 20 of ‘the greatest speeches of the 20th Century’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches/0,,2056516,00.html and are printing one a day in a little booklet – like one of those part works on crafts or war that ‘week by week, build into an invaluable reference work that you’ll treasure forever’ (translation: week by week, will build into a large pile of magazines that will collect dust under your bed and anyway they have done all the interesting guns, ‘planes and battles by issue 15’ – but for middle class people.
The first speech was Churchill’s ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ and frankly, they should have either stopped there or had that as the last in the series because, as captain Jack Sparrow said as he shot at an undead monkey ‘top that!’.
Famous speeches are all very well, but I have an alternative proposition – what about the obscure speeches of the 20th Century? We live in an age of peer to peer networking and citizen journalism. Great speeches are made every day, why can we not nominate our suggestions?
Great Speeches of the 20th Century
Stick your pub up your arse
My mate Jeff, February 29, 1985
Foreword by Macnabbs
Foreword
Like many of the greatest speeches, this one was all about context. Delivered say, in the bath at home or in a caravan in a field in Wales, it would have lost much of its impact. Certainly, the night I witnessed its delivery, the impact was great.
Barred from the Olde Cock Inne in Droitwich after an altercation with the relief landlord (while the regular landlord was having his corns attended to in hospital), Jeff took his banishment like a man, a pissed man, but a man nonetheless.
Standing in the doorway, he turned to address the pub. The image was that of John Wayne at the end of ‘The Searchers’, the speech itself like a cross between ‘once more into the breach’ and ‘if I die, think only this of me’.
His speech on his return from exile (the now-famous ‘the usual please’ monologue) is a tale for another day.
His passing left no man unaffected – it was, after all, his round.
Stick your Pub.
Alright, alright, stop pushing.
Before I go, you’d best remember this. I’ve drunk here man and boy, I was here before you were here and I will be here after you’ve gone…I just won’t be around while you’re here…and that’s okay because during my time in exile I won’t be witness to the conflict that’s played out here every night – the battle between your rank market-stall aftershave and your BO.
Alright, alright, I’m going.
I know my way around a pub, the bar, the lounge, the bogs. I know my way around bitter, mild and lager. And I know my way around landlords, and in your case tubby it’s a long way round. I’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly, often the last two combined.
Sorry mate, did you want to get in? There you go.
So I leave now, but do so freely and willingly. Where I go the beer is not as good and the pork scratchings don’t have as much hair, but I shall bear my time in the wilderness, in the outer darkness, at the Hop Pole across the road, nobly. I could ask my friends to join me and form an Olde Cock Inn in exile, but frankly it’s pissing down out here and I can see they’ve settled between the fire and the fruiter and it’d take a miracle to shift them.
I shall return.
Oh, and you mate can shove your pub up your arse.
How his speech was reported in the local free-ad newspaper the next week:
Mystery graffiti appears on pub
The temporary landlord of the Olde Cock Inn on the high street was today appealing for witnesses after vandals wrote obscene messages about what he might do with pork scratchings in his spare time.
Tony Tossure (38) explained ‘it’s not as if I even like putting them in my mouth, let alone what is being suggested’.
Enquiries contine.
The first speech was Churchill’s ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ and frankly, they should have either stopped there or had that as the last in the series because, as captain Jack Sparrow said as he shot at an undead monkey ‘top that!’.
Famous speeches are all very well, but I have an alternative proposition – what about the obscure speeches of the 20th Century? We live in an age of peer to peer networking and citizen journalism. Great speeches are made every day, why can we not nominate our suggestions?
Great Speeches of the 20th Century
Stick your pub up your arse
My mate Jeff, February 29, 1985
Foreword by Macnabbs
Foreword
Like many of the greatest speeches, this one was all about context. Delivered say, in the bath at home or in a caravan in a field in Wales, it would have lost much of its impact. Certainly, the night I witnessed its delivery, the impact was great.
Barred from the Olde Cock Inne in Droitwich after an altercation with the relief landlord (while the regular landlord was having his corns attended to in hospital), Jeff took his banishment like a man, a pissed man, but a man nonetheless.
Standing in the doorway, he turned to address the pub. The image was that of John Wayne at the end of ‘The Searchers’, the speech itself like a cross between ‘once more into the breach’ and ‘if I die, think only this of me’.
His speech on his return from exile (the now-famous ‘the usual please’ monologue) is a tale for another day.
His passing left no man unaffected – it was, after all, his round.
Stick your Pub.
Alright, alright, stop pushing.
Before I go, you’d best remember this. I’ve drunk here man and boy, I was here before you were here and I will be here after you’ve gone…I just won’t be around while you’re here…and that’s okay because during my time in exile I won’t be witness to the conflict that’s played out here every night – the battle between your rank market-stall aftershave and your BO.
Alright, alright, I’m going.
I know my way around a pub, the bar, the lounge, the bogs. I know my way around bitter, mild and lager. And I know my way around landlords, and in your case tubby it’s a long way round. I’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly, often the last two combined.
Sorry mate, did you want to get in? There you go.
So I leave now, but do so freely and willingly. Where I go the beer is not as good and the pork scratchings don’t have as much hair, but I shall bear my time in the wilderness, in the outer darkness, at the Hop Pole across the road, nobly. I could ask my friends to join me and form an Olde Cock Inn in exile, but frankly it’s pissing down out here and I can see they’ve settled between the fire and the fruiter and it’d take a miracle to shift them.
I shall return.
Oh, and you mate can shove your pub up your arse.
How his speech was reported in the local free-ad newspaper the next week:
Mystery graffiti appears on pub
The temporary landlord of the Olde Cock Inn on the high street was today appealing for witnesses after vandals wrote obscene messages about what he might do with pork scratchings in his spare time.
Tony Tossure (38) explained ‘it’s not as if I even like putting them in my mouth, let alone what is being suggested’.
Enquiries contine.
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