Speech by Matt Walker

Speech Type: Best man
Speech Creator: Matt Walker
Speech Date: Jul 2002
Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please!!

My name is Matt and I am Ken's Best Man. Some of you may remember me from my very skilled playing of the gavel earlier on – never had one lesson either!

Firstly on behalf of the Bridesmaids, I'd like to thank Ken for his kind words. I have to agree they look wonderful and have done an excellent job today. And I'm sure you will agree that Sarah is looking absolutely stunning as well. As for Ken, well, he's not scrubbed-up too badly himself!

Apparently Ken chose me as his best man because I was someone he could trust. Before I betray that trust, I'd like to tell you about the structure of my speech. The first half of the speech will take the form of a virulent character assassination. But I thought it only fair to add a sense of balance to the speech, so I can tell you the second half will take the form of? a virulent character assassination as well?you can't get much more balanced than that!

Before I go on, I have a more serious announcement to make – Daniel, the Front of House Manager here at Nuffield College was contacted today by Oxfordshire County Council's Health and Safety executive. They demanded that you all refrain from jumping onto your chairs and tables during the rapturous standing ovation at the end of this speech. Thanks in advance for your compliance.

Although I was truly honoured when Ken asked me to be his Best Man many months ago, but I must admit that despite appearances, I am nervous – as nervous as a virgin bride? A supposedly wise person once said that when making a public speech, to calm the nerves, one simply has to imagine the entire audience naked. But its actually quite distracting and its making me even more nervous! Thankfully for myself and for everyone here, I'm only going to talk for a few minutes anyway because of my throat – Sarah said she'd cut it if I spoke for too long!

Kenneth Amadeo Edwards, yes I know, that's Amadeo – but we'll come to that later – was born on 15th January 1975. I did some research and found that Ken shares the same birth-date with a couple of very famous individuals who, as a pair, succinctly summarise the two voices that live inside Ken's head. The first, representing the caring, thoughtful, and sensitive Ken is none other than Martin Luther King. The second, is Edward Teller, the father of the "Hydrogen Bomb".

K-E-N?KEN

I thought it would be fun to use the letters of Ken's name to add some structure to the speech. I think I may be proved wrong in the assertion that it would be fun, but this does give me some direction?

Unlike some of his close friends who can't even spell properly, the K in KEN is for clever. Ken is a fountain of information – albeit, most of it totally useless.

The letter E
Lets face it, anyone who's born in Ruislip can hardly be referred to as EXOTIC, and ELEGANT is not Ken's middle-name by any stretch of the imagination. Bet he wishes it was though?

The E in Ken has to be for ECCENTRIC. In fact, Ken's close-friends, when talking about him behind his back, never refer to him simply as ‘Ken’. In such circumstances, every bitchy comment begins, "Ken He's Such A Wierdo Right?" after which the complaint is relayed with great annoyance..

Continuing on the ‘Eccentric’ theme, Ken went through a stage of disappearing late at night from Halls of Residence and returning at 4am, with twigs, mud and glue in his hair! To this day, only Ken knows what on earth he was up to! Also, the strangest, most unearthly noises used to emanate from Ken's bedroom in Halls – an unholy alliance of whirring, banging, rasping, clanking and hooting noises. We all thought that Ken, ever playing the hair-brain scientist, was attempting to clone himself.

Let us continue to explore the essence of Ken He's Such A Wierdo Right's eccentricity?

Being an audience obviously well-endowed?I have to stop doing that – it really isn't helping at all! Being an audience obviously well endowed with a great degree of intellect and, dare I venture, a great knowledge of the natural world, I'm sure you all know only too well, that adult badgers have few natural enemies. Yet any adult badgers unfortunate enough to have lived in a set in the Kemptown area of Brighton around 1996-97 would violently disagree with such a statement. Despite having benefited from the calming affects of Sarah's presence for almost 6 months prior to the move to Kemptown, Ken was the scourge of the local badger community. In fact, the mere mention of his name was enough to cause alarm-bells to ring into badger sets across East Sussex such was his reputation – a reputation he gained from keenly hounding the hapless beasts up and down the street whenever he'd happen to chance upon one on his way home from the tavern. A cruel cruel man.

Finally on the theme of Ken's eccentricity, which as you can tell, is a rather dominant theme in his make-up: If I may, I'd like to draw your attention to the recollections of some of Ken's university friends –

He once stormed out of the pub, in a fit of anger, in the middle of a game of Monopoly, because one of the other players wouldn't sell him the property he wanted.

We didn't meet Sarah for months after they started dating as he would sneak her upstairs by-passing all of us with the stealth of a ninja.

While travelling around India, he thought it would be for the best if he got one of his ears de-waxed in a Delhi park by a dodgy old blind Indian man with a rusty home-made kebab skewer. After a few minutes poking the rusty piece of metal in and out of Ken's ear, the old man pulled it out to reveal half of Ken's brain clinging to the end of it?That explains a lot.

More recently, while staying at a cottage in the Lake District, for no apparent reason, he jumped over the sofa and smashed his head on the ceiling – Ken is fine, the ceiling is permanently damaged.

He gets so excited about playing Risk that he has to stand up to take his go.

He blocked all the sunlight to his room with a wardrobe so that people outside couldn't see what he was doing!

He's totally incomprehensible – It took me months to learn how to understand what he was saying – and sometimes even now I have to ask Sarah for a translation.

When he's in the mood he could start an argument in an empty room. He even managed to start a row once on the correct use of telephone dialling codes!

I really could go on for hours on this topic, but we must move on.

Finally, we come to the letter N.
You may be surprised to know that KEN's ‘N’ is for nice.
Following the doctrine of Brotherly Relationships, a 10 year-old Ken once pad-locked his younger brother Stephen to some railings by the head. In itself, perhaps this is not very nice at all. However, young Ken did return 45 minutes later and unlocked the young Stephen, which I think was a touching gesture, and very nice indeed.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you, K-E-N, KEN.

Seriously though, Ken really is a very special person. He is trusted and respected by his friends and family as much as anyone I know. He is one of the most generous and gregarious people I've had the fortune to meet, and his company is certainly never dull. And once again quoting one of Ken's good friends,?just thinking about Ken makes me laugh! Personally I can't think of a higher compliment than that.

Since meeting Sarah in Brighton 6 years ago, I believe many of Ken's most positive attributes have been nurtured and developed further still. The fact that Ken told several people, the day after his first date with Sarah, that he had just met the girl he was going to marry, speaks volumes for their love.

I think I can speak for everyone here today when I say I really am so glad that Ken has found, in Sarah, someone beautiful, loving, caring and quite simply crazy enough to spend the rest of her life with the perplexing conundrum that is Ken.

I wish you a lifetime together of joyous midnight experiments with twigs, glue, badgers, and hap-hazardly positioned wardrobes.

On behalf of the bridesmaids and myself, can you please be upstanding and make one final toast to the future happiness of the bride and groom – Sarah and Ken!