A three week speech

I am currently in the middle of a speech that will take three weeks by the time I finish it. It started at an event on Tuesday where I was impassioned. At least until the chair told me to pull my trousers up. I carried on talking through the night, to myself, and then on Wednesday I was the warm up act for the main turns at the Future Fun with Brollies event.

Over the years I have learnt that public speaking can be great fun. I patronisingly don't know why some people find the idea of sharing your thoughts with thousands of people who are analysing your every word while you dread making a mistake or your words drying up intimidating. I don't speak to a script - there would be no point as I often don't have a bloody clue what I am going to say - or use Powerpoint (cos I can't ). Old fashioned talking out of you orifice ought to carry the day. And on that note I use some quotes from Horace Andy's song Skylarking (which is about chugging, the charity sector's equivalent of Bogging where tabarded eejits pester people on high streets for the loan of a brolly):

Skylarking, skylarking
That's what youth do today
Skylarking, skylarking
Before they stand up firm on their feet

Get a likkle work, a likkle work
And earn their bread honestly
Beggin' you five cent sir
Beggin' you ten cent sir
Cannot help, no cannot help

So you all keep on doing what you all are doing
You will end up, up up in jail (run by BUBB)

I also throw in a bit of Horace:

"Once a blog has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled"

"Faults are soon copied"

"He wins every hand who mingles not-for-profit with pleasure"

Such insights are always designed to show how clever and classically educated I am.

I speak about some of my great umbrella heroes - Mary Poppins, the shadowy "Umbrella Man" in the Zapruder JFK film, the bloke who killed Markov and Rihanna.

In the umbrella sector drive, rage and passion can be messy but we can achieve amazing things. Let us not be downcast and despair about cuts, which is a bit rich coming from me as I have constantly gone out of my way to despair about cuts, while being downcast. Let us grasp the opportunities of climate change. The future decade is one of growth for our sector if the rains start to fall in greater volume.

I am still making a speech as I type, incidentally, and am now off to Birmingham for the next stage of the Big Arse tour.