Speech by Michael Mosselmans

Speech Type: Best man
Speech Creator: Michael Mosselmans
Speech Date: Jul 2009
I'd like to congratulate Nick on his speech. I always knew it would be hard to follow. And I was right. I could hardly follow any of it.
I was a bit nervous having to make this speech so I prepared a few lines, and having snorted them I feel quite good now
I know there's been some spread betting going on with my bookmaker friends JR and Features about how long my speech would be. I should probably let you know that I've backed myself at 2 hours 26 minutes and the kitty is currently standing at 㿏0 so I should probably apologise in advance
I'm sure you'll agree Suzie looks fantastic today, unlike Nick who looks like he was won in a raffle
Actually I don't know if you know this but Suzy's had a bit of bad luck as she had her credit card stolen on Monday. However Nicks decided not to report it to the police as the thief is spending less on it than Suzy.
I think I'm going to say a couple of words about what kind of a bloke Nick is, just to make sure Suzie knows what she's letting herself in for. I've thought of 12 things to tell you about Nick.
1. I probably first met Nick playing football. I have to congratulate Nick for playing 304 games for our football team Club Sandwich. I know Suzy comes from Gerrards Cross but I can tell you that in his prime Moutrie's cross was every bit as good as Gerrards cross. In fact it's no exaggeration to say that Nick is brilliant in every position. So I think you could be in for a good time tonight Suzie. Nick could almost certainly have played football for England, if he'd decided to make a career out of it. But ever since he was a young lad he's had a burning vocation to spend his life mending peoples computers, and that's what he does and hes very successful at it so full credit to him.
2. Nick's also an incredibly talented musician. He could almost definitely have played violin in the Beatles if he'd felt like it, except that he was born in 1963.
3. You might not know that Nick was born in the same week in 1963 as Mike Myers, who plays Austin Powers, and I think Nick's looking quite groovy baby tonight and I think Suzy's probably looking shagedelic, though I'm not quite sure what it means. And Nick was born in the same week in 1963 as Johnny Depp, and Nick used to look a tiny little bit like Johnny Depp, because Johnny Depp sometimes has a funny little beard, and as most of you know, up until he met Suzie, Nick used to have a funny little moustache. Nick was also born on exactly the same day as the quite famous English swimmer, Ann Fevyer, who Nick used to have some fun times swimming with when he was a young kid. Also in the year Nick was born John F Kennedy made his famous ‘ich bin ein berliner’ speech. And a few years later Nick binned a German as well.
4. Nick's an extremely fast runner. Almost all of us in this room go on the Amsterdam Half Marathon once a year and Nick always wins by miles and miles. By the way Charlie Hoynes is always last.
5. And Nick's one of the world's greatest exponents of the proverb game, which he also virtually invented, although obviously he's not quite in the same class as his friend Dave Boobbyer.
6. Actually one of the things I've noticed about Nick, which I think is what first attracted Suzie to him, is that if you look around the room – Pete, Dave, Andy , Paul, Tom, Patrick, Dean, – the first thing you notice is that almost all of Nick's friends are incredibly good looking.
7. And obviously you can't help noticing that Nick himself has always been incredibly good looking. In fact Evelyn told me that when he was in his absolute prime he was at that time, for a short period, the second best looking out of all the Moutrie brothers.
8. But most importantly of all, Nick is a fantastic father. I think there's very few fathers that I know who've devotedly taken charge of their kids after they've got divorced.
What first made me realize that Suzie was an incredibly lovely person was how she so readily helped take care of Theo after she met Nick. Not meaning that Theo's particularly naughty or anything. Well he's not much naughtier than Hannah anyhow. I think one thing that Theo and Nick have in common is they're both deep down quite nice polite quiet well-behaved young men, but both of them have occasionally been led off the straight and narrow by an evil posh friend called Piers.
9. Nick's also a brilliant chess player. I think he used to be England schoolboys chess champion. Having said that, he's not quite so good at backgammon. I was on a skiing holiday with Nick once and we decided to play a game of backgammon for two quid. I won the first game so we decided to do double or quits. After I'd won 24 games in a row, Nick owed me 17 million quid. He didn't actually have 17 million quid at that point because he hadn't yet got his lucrative IT job in the city. So he said that instead of paying me as a forfeit he'd ski all the way down from the top of Mont Blanc in his slightly soiled y fronts. Which he did. It put quite a lot of the women skiers on the slopes that day off skiing for life.
10. Nick's an extremely kind-natured person. I remember once we went on holiday together to Tanzania, and Nick got friendly with some good looking young Tanzanian men, who asked Nick to dance with them, and Nick wasn't himself particularly attracted to other men at that time, but because he's so kind, he allowed Matthew from Dar Es Salaam to stroke his knee for most of the evening.
11. Nick's also very very brave. He's one of the bravest people you could ever meet. I'm going to have to change this bit of the speech for Paul's wedding, because Paul isn't particularly brave . I remember the last wedding we went to was our friend Andy Hinde's wedding to the lovely young Vicki Heyworth, and at the stag party we went to have a half of bitter shandy at this pub on a bridge, and there was a huge crowd of revelers lined up alongside the river, and just to entertain them, Nick bravely jumped all the way off the bridge into the six inch deep water, and broke his ankle. So we drove him to the local A and E and waited a couple of hours to get him fixed and then we came back to Andy's party. But by this stage, Andy had had a couple of shandies and was feeling quite energetic, as one does when one's young, and so when Nick walked back up the stairs to the party, Andy gave him a playful punch in the stomach, and Nick fell back to the bottom of the stairs and broke his other ankle.
12. But what's a bit sad is that maybe Nick's been a little bit unlucky in his previous marriage because maybe he ended up not being treated very well, which he doesn't at all deserve, so really I know all of Nick's friends are so delighted that he's at last been more lucky and met such a fantastic lady as Suzie and rediscovered love and happiness. Because up until he met Suzie, the truth is he was usually only really able to attract rather fat girls.

Whereas I've been lucky enough to have been married to an incredibly thin girl for quite a long time, long enough to make three pesky kids, So I thought maybe I ought to offer Nick and Suzie a few tips about marriage that I've learned over the years.
The first one is it's important right from the outset to set the ground rules, establish who's boss, then do everything Suzie says.
A second lesson I've learnt is don't ever buy Suzie flowers – she'll remember what you'd done wrong the last time you bought her some and know you're guilty of something
Third Nick I think we also can learn some lessons out of our football team that also apply to marriage.
1. Don't change a winning team.
2. Make sure you score every Saturday.
3. Make sure you change ends at half time.
4. Don't put your tackle in too hard or you might injure yourself
I've also got one tip for Suzy Suzy. A husband is like a tiled floor – lay it right the first time and you can spend years walking all over it
Finally I'd like to thank 4 sets of people without whom all this wouldn't have been possible.
First, I'd like to thank the people who've travelled a really long way to be here. I'd also like to thank two of Nick and Suzy's best friends Sarah and Paul, who've come all the way from Bosom, which is in Holland, and I'd like to extend our best wishes and congratulations to them as they are also getting married in 2 weeks time.
Second, I would like the thank the bridesmaids Isabella .. .. .. I'm sure you will agree look particularly radiant And it's nice to see Bella out of her emo outfit for once
Third, I'd like you to raise your glasses to some really important people without whom today would not be the same. Would you please raise your glasses to the bar staff.
Finally, I'd like to thank Nick and Suzie for organizing and paying for this fantastic wedding. It's been an emotional day. Even the cake is in tiers. I'm really pleased that Nick has managed to find such a beautiful and lovely person as Suzie.
Suzy's really really keen on a game called Mr and Mrs. She rang me up several times and told me Nick would really like it if I got everyone to play Mr and Mrs on Nick's stag night. So on the plane over from Geneva, I wrote up all these very exciting Mr and Mrs questions but then stupidly I left them all behind on the plane. So when I got to the stag party we didn't have the Mr and Mrs questions. So to fill the gap at the last minute we had to arrange a kissogram lady instead. Which was obviously a very poor substitute. But now I'm pleased to say Suzie and Nick are Mr and Mrs Moutrie.
So I think it's high time we should toast our friends Mr and Mrs Suzy and Nick Moutrie.