Columnists
On hot air
James Cary
For a man, the easiest speech you'll ever give is at
your wedding. You just have to thank people for the flowers and the
cake and all the laughs are bonus. Any half-joke will be met with
gales of guffaws. The best man has to follow that. It's a tough
challenge and, being a comedy writer, I sometimes I get asked for
help.
So I give this advice. Say the bride looks stunning,
that the groom is lucky, and a total clown. Avoid light-hearted
references to sexual deviance. They won't play. Keep it simple. Do
not, and I cannot stress this enough, use Powerpoint. It won't
work. The machinery will fail. The light will be wrong. People
won't be able to see. The cable won't fit. Honestly. Don't do
it.
Above all, be brief. Most best man speeches are
normally way too long. Aim for ten minutes, not half an hour. If
you finish before the audience want you too, they'll be pleasantly
surprised and clap louder.
I realise this may be a little brusque, but my advice
is at least practical. You might say that I should have more
sympathy. But, being a sitcom writer, my life is essentially one
best man's speech after another. Half-hour ones, not ten minute
ones. Something I've written is performed to an audience. And then
broadcast on radio or television to be scrutinised by a million
people or more. There's an extra layer of baffling complexity since
a roomful of people who've chosen to watch my show may have a
different reaction to an indifferent public who have stumbled
across my show on their TV or Radio.
And then there are the professional audience members:
critics. I've had plenty of reviews in my time, positive and
negative, well-written and embarrassing, but recently I had one
which was both an honour and a harrowing experience. In the past,
I've had my radio shows reviewed, mostly negatively, by the
Daily Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds, the godmother of
Radio. But now my TV show (Bluestone 42) has been reviewed
by the godfather of TV: AA Gill in the Sunday Times.
AA Gill is an excellent wordsmith. He writes very
good prose and his TV and restaurant reviews are extremely
eloquent. However, one could argue that he is completely unfit to
review television in general, since he clearly despises it. TV is a
popular medium and AA Gill is undoubtedly an elitist - and I don't
mean that pejoratively. But overall, he comes across as a tired,
articulate man looking for something to hate.
I would argue, however, that he is completely
unsuited to reviewing TV comedy, since he dislikes jokes and
laughter. He publicly said so when reviewing Lead Balloon
a few years ago: 'This series is part of a new trend of comedy
shows that don't make you laugh; you just nod your head and mutter,
"That's really funny." It's a Darwinian improvement on the tyranny
of the set-up-gag guffaw, and I approve of it. Laughter is ugly and
common.' Asking his opinion on TV comedy is like asking Simon
Cowell to judge a flower-arranging competition. Why would you do
that, other than to hear his entertainingly sneery tone?
AA Gill obviously hated my show. But he didn't just
bat it away with a superior flick of the pen in one elegant
paragraph. He spent two whole pages saying how much he loathed it
and that it was practically a war crime and that everyone involved
should be paraded through Wootten Bassett. He also did that thing
that some critics do which is invent a show they'd like to see in
their heads based on your title and idea, and then slam you for not
writing that show. He did that, which is tiresome, not least
because the show in his head is unbroadcastable on television. But
why would he play by TV's rules when he despises it the idiotbox so
much?
In a way, being pilloried by AA Gill is a great
honour. Like being shot in the leg by a famous rapper. It's
painful, but memorable and means you have, to some extent, arrived.
And yet it still bothers me. How could it not? Something I spent
two years writing is dismissed in two pages in the Sunday
Times.
We all look for approval - from parents, peers or
critics. I need to remember that God has seen far worse things in
me than my writing, but loves me unconditionally. And that's all
that matters. But I'm funny, right? RIGHT?