Best Man Speech For Paul Swannell
Introduction
Thank you Swan or as I have come to think of you, my warm up man, for the kind introduction. I would like to agree with you that the bridesmaids did a wonderful job, you all look stunning without out-shining the gorgeous bride.
Let's begin with a toast. I would like you all to raise your glasses to the beautiful bride and her bridesmaids. To the bride and bridesmaids
I have been given a few messages from friends sadly unable to make it today, so i will read them out now:
Hey Mr and Mrs Swannell, Peach here. Gutted I can't be there, but I hope you have a wonderful day. Here's to a lifetime of happiness together.
There was another message left on my mobile but it was left at 3am in the morning and entirely incoherent, and possibly in french.
And the final one is a message from Chas Castell: BAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Chase me.
Now on to the character assassination, I mean speech.
I have known Swan - apparently some of you may know him by his nick name of Paul - since were teenagers, so you might think that means I have plenty of stories to tell, however Louise asked me to bear in mind that Swan likes to portray himself as a decent, well behaved, sensible, catholic lad....
This left me rather short of anecdotes, so I emailed selected friends and family for suggestions. Unfortunately it would seem that most of your fond memories of swan are punctuated by vomiting in cabs, trains, beds and saucepans to name a few, which seemed rather inappropriate for a pre-dinner speech.
However, a few clean stories did creep in and I'm assured that we should be grateful that Swan and louise opted for the 30 minute version of the catholic wedding mass. Apparently swan can get easily bored in church and has been known to let long winded priests know his feelings about their sermons by standing on the pews dancing and singing Boring boring boring at the top of his voice.
However, its when we started drinking that most of the stories begin.
Baja.
Whenever we've gone on holiday, Swan has always led the charge to test out the local alcoholic beverages.
This has led to the discovery of the delightful Poire Williams...
an over consumption of Ricard......
but his crowning glory was in Mexico when he embarked on the challenge to try every Mexican beer. it was getting to end of the holiday and just one eluded him. Tecate. It was advertised everywhere............ but strangely none of the bars we went in ever had it. After preparing by getting a haircut at a backstreet-barbers, where he very nearly lost his sideburns through an interesting combination of a lack of glasses, swan not speaking any Spanish and the barber not speaking English, he was ready. We set off as a group on the hunt for the mythical tecate. After a couple of false starts, we saw ahead of us, glinting in the sun, a massive tecate sign above a darkened entrance. Perfect.
Swan strode forward with determination and entered the bar. We Followed him into a gloomy room which can only be described as looking like a garage, furnished with plastic garden furniture and populated with tramps. Not a great start, but still, the desire of tecate caused us to thrown caution to the wind and we ordered at the bar. After some negotiation with the barmaid we got a drink, but it wasn't tecate! Never mind, we thought, we'll finish this and continue on our quest. We were just getting to the end of the drink when. The bar maid came over with another 2 litre bottle of beer. After some attempted conversation and wild gesturing swan discovered that it was a gift from one of the locals. Not wanting to appear rude we accepted the beer which we planned to drink and then leave the bar. Then another drink arrived, And then another. Odd, we thought, why is everyone being so generous. We peered around the gloom. Apart from the bar maid, there was only one girl. and then a rather slow and drunken fight broke out in the corner over her, and it turned out that in fact she was a he.
It dawned on us, We were in a gay bar, and the locals thought we'd intentionally gone there. The drinks were piling up on the table faster than we could drink them, what could we do? We wanted to leave, but there was free beer, something swan has professed to love more than life itself
Then a man staggered up behind swan and started to give him a neck massage, followed by some slurred spanish words and extremely inappropriate gesturing.
We needed an escape plan......, so what do you think our hero did?
Swan got up, and headed towards the door where he started talking to a different guy. from the game of charades that followed, It didn't look like much of an escape plan especially when both of them headed off together across the room.......... To the pool table. A drunken game ensued, which involved the Mexican player swapping sides multiple times without realising, and swan doing only marginally better. Still, we all crowded around the table and when the game finally finished, managed to make our bid for freedom.
Unfortunately Swan's special friends from the Rodeo Bar could not be with us today, but Swan to celebrate your wedding and as a souvenir of this memorable outing I have had some Tecate specially shipped over from Mexico for you. (give swan Tecate)
Gifts.
This brings me nicely on to gifts. Swan as I am sure you all know has always been very generous when it comes to gifts and giving. Who else would give the essential house warming gift of a nose hair trimmer? Or the never popular DVDs terminator woman and Jason and the cyborgs. And surely you will all agree that liquid dog food was a particularly thoughtful gift, especially considering the recipient didn't own a dog. ..... But the best gifts were the surprise gifts acquired during a night out and slipped into coats and bags unseen.
The pepper that burst open on the top deck of a bus, and started everyone sneezing....
The fish sauce in the hood of coat that caused us to abandon a pub thinking the smell in there was unbearable....
I still have the cocktail shaker stolen from a nightclub, given to me by swan in payment for soiling my bed.
But I'm not sure what happened to the large decorative ice bucket, that swan claimed to the bouncer was not hidden under his top.
I am also assured that there is a pub in Lancaster that went for weeks with no cutlery because it had all ended up at Swan's student flat
In acknowledgment of your generous nature and as it is your wedding I thought that it was only right that this time -I- give -you- a gift....... I know the transition to married life can be difficult, what better way to start than with a gift of an instruction manual to accompany your new wife.
Pants.
In preparing for this speech I have realised that in some cases Swan really is the sensible, well behaved catholic many of you may recognise. When tricked by a certain seedy friend into going to a gentleman's establishment he took off his glasses so he couldn't see. But for a man with such high morals, there's a surprising number of stories involving underwear.....
One such event happened in Birmingham, whilst waiting for the delivery of a balti. Swan unable to suppress his hunger got hold of a pair of knickers from the washing line, and then to the surprise and dismay of all present attempted to eat them! Luckily the baltis arrived a few minutes later, before swan was able to progress onto larger items of clothing.
Flash forward 10 years and we see another scenario, this time our hero licking some pants that had recently been acquired from a stranger. He'll claim he was tricked, but his past actions speak volumes.
But some of the stories unfortunately also involve his own pants. Children ran screaming from the sea in Bournemouth when an ill prepared swan refused to let a lack of swimming attire prevent him from cooling off in the sea....No swan your Y-fronts did not look just like swimming trunks! Swimming trunks do not go see through in the water
Of course, it is probably best not to mention the time that swan thought it would be a good idea to wander around the small village in which we grew up in, in just his boxer shorts, accompanied by 2 naked bodyguards.
And i'll leave it up to your imagination where swan thought the safest storage place for the ushers ties was
Now I noticed that there are many families who have made the journey to Spain to celebrate your wedding, for their benefit I thought it would be best to give you these in order to prevent any repeats of the past. (give swan budgie smugglers).
Again with the past in mind I thought these might be of use for Louise in case Swan gets hungry(give edible undies)
Resourcefulness
I am sure you will all agree that Swan is nothing if not a resourceful man. Many of you many be aware that he has perfected a way of cooking bacon with nothing but an office laminating machine. Or that his hatred of ironing led him to discover that a freshly laundered shirt can be rendered wrinkle free, if a bit damp by taking it into the shower in the morning with him. But his resourcefulness reaches its pinnacle with his ability to obtain free drinks. This leads me back to what appears to be a recurring theme.... Drinking...........
I won't describe all the extreme lengths this man will go to for a free drink. So here are the edited highlights............
As a student he was renowned at the union for helpfully collecting the glasses, albeit often still full of beer, and without the consent of the original owners. If this minesweeping tactic failed, he'd collect the dregs from a great many pints and then take the revolving cocktail back to the bar claiming that the pint did not taste right - must be end of the barrel or something - and persuade to them swap it for a new one!
As a respectable member of society he has progressed, preferring now to plan with Nick intricate pub crawls that involve using vouchers from the web to get free beers under a variety of false names and personas. That said i'm still hoping for the day that i go drinking with swan where a beer will arrived safely from the bar without a good few centimetres somehow disappearing from the top.
Ending
Swan you are without a doubt a very lucky man, how you got someone as lovely and dare I say normal as Louise to agree to marry you I don't know. Louise you must be commended for your patience if not for your dubious choice in life-partners.
But in all seriousness I am sure everyone here will agree with me that you look very beautiful today.
Louise you scrub up quite nicely too.
I would like to lead everyone here in wishing you both a long and happy future together. Please raise your glasses to "The bride and groom". To the bride and groom
Anyway, "I think you have had quite enough now" - a phrase swan has heard from many a barman. Swan, Louise, you can breathe a sigh of relief; I've got to the end of my speech without a mention of swan's unusual toilet habits, his love of the trombone or his trip to prison.
Outtakes
Some parts of the speech didn't make the grade. Here's few:
Let me start by explaing that Swan is most definately a man of his word..... No wait that's not right. I distinctly remember swan promising not to ask be to be his best man. When following his engagement to the beautiful but long suffering Louise, he apologetically asked if i would be his best man, the only conclusion i could come to was that he had so few friends that i had no choice but to say yes..... However seeing so many of you here i can see that i was wrong.
There is one costly byproduct of free beers. Swan must have paid more for replacement pairs of glasses than he's ever saved. One such occasion was after a bundling at snows corner. Swan managed to go home unaware that he wasnt wearing his glasses, and they were found by the park bench, so I took them home for safe keeping, since this was beofre the days of mobiles and texting. The next day, valerie loveland, the local estate agent who I used to do weekend work for, was rather surprised to see an apparently blind man stumble Into her office, demanding his glasses back! Oh how i regretted showing him where I worked, but Luckily I was indeed working that day, and was able to help restore swans vision and send him home to nurse the hangover.
from the pants section: the semi-accidental public display of nudity in London's busy tottenham court road when after a couplemof shandies he mistook one of the few trees for a urinal
And a few other notes of things I didn't I couldn't fit in even with oblique references (note: edited list!):