THESE VITAL SPEECHES

We all assume that Oscar said it.”
I like quotes.
I like them a lot, as you’re about to
find out.
I like them so much I recently tried
to foist one on my Chief Executive.
For his new year staff address—not a
speech but an email.
He’d done his end-of-2014-you’veall-done-very-well
message and nondenominational
seasonal greetings.
This was his now-let’s-get-our-sleevesrolled-up
for 2015 number.
He didn’t use the quote.
He liked it and said he would use it
another time.
He won’t.
The quote was apt and it was pithy
and it had credibility.
But it didn’t quite fit him.
And that matters.
This speech about speeches is, I
hope, neither ill-fitting nor self-indulgent.
For the speechwriter is a tailor—a
maker of bespoke garments.
Even if those garments might sometimes
be said to resemble the emperor’s
new clothes.
I’m thinking here more of Professor
Mary Beard than Dame Vivienne
Westwood.
Professor Beard made a recent documentary
for the BBC in which she bemoaned
the use of “borrowed” words.
She said rhetoric should be about
getting to the bottom of an argument,
facing your own ignorance and confronting
your own prejudices.
I agree.
She also said that having somebody
else write your speeches was part of the
problem with rhetoric today.
I disagree.
But in the words of Nina Simone—
“Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
Nina Simone didn’t actually write
the music to that song or indeed the
lyrics.
It was penned by Bennie Benjamin,
Gloria Caldwell, and Sol Marcus.
Does that diminish its majesty or
make it any less her work?
My title today is—
“Rhetoric: indulging the hope that
nature will finally yield to observation
and perseverance the keys to the heart.”
I love that.
A line from an essay penned in 1897
by a young Winston Churchill.
The other contender for the title was
one I’d used for an article in an online
journal—
“Touch me, I’m rhetoric: confessions
of a celery eater.”
I think I chose wisely.
Now, I want to say a big thanks to
Henriette for inviting me today.
I’m always, but always, delighted to
talk about one of my favourite things—
speechwriting.
It’s up there with indie music from
1982 to 2003, Oxford United the glory
years—a much shorter timespan—and
every art-house film released in 1995.
‘95 being a year I found myself
between careers.
Speechwriting is a part of my work
but never the part that feels like work.
When writing these words I might as
well have been skipping through a summer
meadow.
Colleagues in my open plan office
were assailing their keyboards—preparing
agendas, drafting reports, sending
emails.
And it looked like I was too.
When in reality—my version of
it—I was lying in the grass, shielding
my eyes from the sun, and searching for
animal shapes in the clouds.
That’s not work!
Louis Armstrong said—
“What we play is life.”
And, if I may try on the reversible
raincoat of rhetoric—chiasmus—life is
what we play.
So how did I get into this game?
I wrote my first speech in 2002.
For a Green MSP for a debate on his
Organic Farming Targets Bill.
And endured three hours of frustration
one Friday afternoon before an
idea had the decency to show up.
Not an especially brilliant idea, certainly
not a very original idea.
But I grabbed it.
What was this in my hands—tiny
and shivering with life?
No less than a metaphor to drive the
speech.
15
Albeit carbon neutral and made
from recycled materials—this was
Green party policy after all.
Suitably enough it was travel themed
too—something about maps and destinations
as I recall.
No dragons.
But which neatly framed what this
draft legislation was about.
How pleased was I.
No, that won’t do.
I was more than pleased.
I was smitten.
I was onto something—something
new, to me at least.
I’d always loved words, from bedtime
stories and the backs of cereal boxes to
big old novels.
By way of kids’ comics, football
fanzines, political pamphlets, the NME
and Private Eye.
I’d even written for magazines and
newspapers as a side-line.
Another confession …
I’d been, whisper it, a music journalist.
Yet this was different, as if I’d been
ushered into another realm.
Was it Wonderland or 100 Acre
Wood? Moomin Valley or The Far
Away Tree? Bedrock or Springfield?
I felt fuzzy.
I felt filled with anticipation.
I felt like a diabetic in a sweetshop.
For the rest of that afternoon and
into the evening, when I should have
been doing Friday things, I wrote that
speech.
And the following Wednesday there I
was at the back of the debating chamber.
Waiting for Robin to breathe life into
my words.
My words that would become his
words if this was to work at all.
I had, in modest self-assessment,
succeeded in capturing his warm tones
on the page.
It was only the former leader of the
Greens’ trademark Dr Who scarf I
couldn’t quite replicate in text.
It’s a disconcerting discovery at
first—having someone else’s voice in
your head as you write.
Tuning in—crackle of static as you
turn the dial—trying to lock onto that
signal.
CICERO 2016