Speech by Giles Smith

Speech Type: Best man
Speech Creator: Giles Smith
Speech Date: Jun2007
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, for those that don't know me my name is Giles, the one who drew the short straw today……………and for that I apologise in advance.

Thankfully due to tradition I go last and get to hear what the competition is like. And having listened to them all I ask you to bear with me.

I would like to start by thanking Pete for his kind words on behalf of our lovely bridesmaids. I'm sure you will agree they have all carried out their role superbly I would also like to thank the Ushers &amp Groomsmen…… for at least turning up sober!

I think you will all agree Jenny looks one in a million today ……as opposed to Pete who looks like he was won in a raffle and punching well above his weight.

Being Best Man is like being asked to sleep with the Queen, a great honour at first, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to back out.… but with the honour comes the job of writing this speech, and to be honest I wanted to make the process as easy as possible.

So where do you begin for ideas?
The obvious place seemed to be the Internet, so with a multitude of resources at my fingertips I began searching the web.

After a couple of hours searching I found some REALLY good stuff, but ….then I remembered I was supposed to be looking for Best Man tips!!!

During the service today I couldn't help thinking, how funny it is that history repeats itself, I mean it was 29 years ago Graham and Judy were sending their daughter to bed with a dummy………and it's happening all over again today.

I'd like to thank Pete and Jenny for the wonderful gifts they have given us all, and also to inform Pete that due to this bribery I will now read the second version of my speech.

Being the best man has a number of responsibilities that I take very seriously:
1 making sure his face and hair are in order…I think this is a little unfair but I made the best out of a bad situation.
2 Not losing the rings during the ceremony.
3 Seeing the angry ex-girlfriends are kept away – thankfully the foot and mouth epidemic saw off most of them
4 and not revealing any of Pete's dark &amp deepest secrets…well 3 out 4 isn't bad!!!

As part of my research I discovered that according to tradition I am supposed to SING THE GROOM'S PRAISES and tell you all about his MANY good points.
Well, I'm very sorry but I CAN'T SING, and I WON'T LIE

So where do I start, well I met Pete in September 1999 when we both started at university together, after a quick introduction we decided to go and collect our bus passes, stopping for a beer to get to know each other.

This time however we bought the beer from the bar instead of the instance at Repton where Pete decided the best way to impress his collage friends would be by breaking into his housemasters house and steeling his supply of Stones bitter.

Of course Pete was caught and gated, but this did earn him the first of his two Repton knicknames.

Pete became known as “Rock Ard” and as with any hard man Pete started to hang round with his hard friends, unfortunately for Pete, his one trick wonder was not able to keep him as a valued member of the gang and Pete's name quickly changed to “Worf” after the cling on in Star Trek.

Needless to say Pete didn't mention any of these stories to any of his new flatmates at university and I quickly formed the opinion that Pete was a quiet, hard working conscientious person. How wrong I was.

The first memorable stories I have of Pete came in quick succession where within the space of a week Pete managed to nearly kill me twice in his car.

The first I could accept as he pulled out of a blind junction and the other person was going quite quickly, but the second time Pete managed to pull out of a junction and head the wrong way down a duel carriageway.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky as he did not make me wear either a cap, or hair net when I got in his car, un like some of his other university friends.

Although after these scares I think a crash helmet may have been more appropriate.

So we finished our first year without many other stories to tell besides the odd joke that we would play on our flatmate Kaz.

Which on one occasion saw me hiding in Pete's shower to avoid her, whilst listening to Pete get the blame and Kaz refuse to believe I was responsible.

That summer we all went on an 18-30’s holiday to Bodrum and the sharks were born! We drunk, played football, went to pubs and clubs had drinking competitions but none of these were as memorable as Steve's screams when Pete got in the shower with him, or watching Pete dance with a 5 year old girl that took a liking to him.

So on to the second year, I joined the house to find out Pete had already made himself comfortable in my room, decided he didn't like it and moved into the room he was meant to have had, of course he changed all the furniture so I had the worst stuff in the house, dodgy draws, no wardrobe while he had 2, a painted chair and a dirty mattress! Thanks for that mate.

Pete's new room had one big disadvantage over mine, and that was more people used the bathroom on that floor due to its location.

This didn't bother Pete and irrespective of weather his housemates, their girlfriends or peoples parents were in the house Pete did not see the necessity to put any clothes on when he went to the toilet.

This got even more interesting after a drunken night when Pete kicked the lock in on the toilet and for the rest of the year would just walk in and use the toilet without caring who was in the shower.

Or if someone was using the toilet he would use the bath, much to Sally and Rogers's disgust.

Richmond Avenue was the birth place of the legendry buttercup dance, which Pete formulated more to annoy Dez and his new friend than anything else. Of course the idea had been born the drunken night before when Pete and Dez had both been out.

Pete had come home got naked again, and then decided to go outside for a wall social, he put on a random coat that was lying around, as it was cold. It was when he was outside that he realised he had left his mobile in the taxi, he proceed to phone 118 118 on the house phone to ask for a taxi number. When asked which number he wanted them to tell him he replied “All of them”

It was in the rush to find his phone that he misplaced his house keys, which were in the random coat he was wearing, off course he couldn't remember this in the morning, and it was Dez's new female friend that found them when she put her coat on.

He also could not remember running up an enormous phone bill calling all the Taxi companies in Huddersfield, although this was smaller than the bill they rang up on his mobile.

Pete could not live without his phone or his watch as without them he could not tell the time, and on one occasion was quizzing the postman, as to weather he had time to go back and collect his watch before uni, of course the postman not knowing Pete probably thought he was a nutter.

Pete would always be forgetting stuff, and on one occasion left his jumper on the bed, he had been in that much of a rush to leave that he decided it was quicker to leave via a window than the door, of course he then phoned me to see if I could bring it with me as he wanted it.

One thing Pete did always remember was to scream Peak acho at the required time, and would ended up winning the trophy that every member of the house had fought all year to win.
We all took a year out in our third year, and all got jobs, Pete managed to land a job in a knickers factory doing odd jobs, which he told us included taking promotional pictures, although I best not expand to much on this we all considered it typical of Pete to do this.

In the final year thing settled down a little and we all concentrated on obtaining our degrees in Championship Manager, finally some of Pete's decisions appear to be paying off for real at Pride Park, although I view this as the gift of 6 points this season.

The final year was busy and we would often find that Pete would obtain food any way possible, his favourite was by talking drunken people into parting with their Pizza after a night out, or eating Steve's special of “its only rice” but always getting caught in the process.

I did however manage to teach Pete how to wash up and empty the bin, during our routine weekly washing night, so at least two of us in the house were capable of doing these tasks!

Pete finished at university and went to become a holiday rep, where I visited him in two different countries, on both of these trips Pete managed to forget to arrange any sort of transfer for me, but did manage to book me on trips thinking it would be funny to book me on a trip as him and let all the tourists ask me questions about how long it would take to get to the Nou Camp stadium, or when was the unfinished church built.

It was on my second visit to see Pete, where I first met Jenny, and I thought she would immediately knock him into shape, unfortunately this was not the case and on my last day in resort, we all went on a booze cruise I was sat next to Jenny chatting away when we saw Pete walking the plank, he got to the end and was encouraging his guests to follow.

This soon got his guests cheering and Pete decided that he should see if he could get any of them to walk the plank naked, using all the management techniques he had picked up at university he decided to lead by example.

Whilst Pete was swimming round a guest managed to steel his swimming shorts and throw them back aboard. In front of 50-60 paying guests Pete climbed out of the water and started running round the boat looking for his shorts.

I therefore don't think Jenny will find it surprising when she hears that I did try to keep him on a leash on the stag do, but he still managed to be strip naked.

Pete, I wish I could simply have kept this speech to simple stories about you putting a bet on a dog race that had already taken place, and still manage to back the looser, or putting your foot through the bath, or taking a gas bottle from the petrol station and not paying for it because you didn't know you had to, But I felt there was so much more to offer I had to elaborate.

Jenny is a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Thank God you married her before she found one!

I'm sure you will all agree Pete and Jenny are a perfect match and are one of the friendliest, nicest couples you could hope to meet. Like Richard goes with Judy, Pete goes with Jenny.

Pete – I'm sure you don't need reminding of how lucky you are –
I'd just like to say that in Jenny you've found someone attractive, great fun to be with and in all honesty a bit of a catch, as I'm sure you'll agree!

And Jenny, in Pete, you've found someone who is.… Really good with accounts!

I would also say best of luck and I'm really delighted for you both. I hope you have a long and happy future together. And thank you Pete, it's been an honour to be your best man, this is your finest hour mate.

I also hope you have a great honeymoon, which I'm told is that time between &quotI do&quot and &quotYou'd better&quot.

In all seriousness Pete, we've had some excellent times together over the years, and I know we will continue to do so in the future.

I'm sure Pete and Jenny are so honoured that so many of their friends have turned up to celebrate their wedding with them today.

So can I ask you all to stand and raise your glasses in a toast to the happy couple?

Wishing you both all the happiness in the world – To Pete and Jenny. The new Mr and Mrs Bond!!!