Speech by Richard

Speech Type: Best man
Speech Creator: Richard
Speech Date: 23/06/2013 19:56:53

Good evening, my name is Richard and Ian decided that I should have the honour of speaking in front of almost 100 guests……..cheers mate. I'm not a fan of public speaking, but I'm told it's like going to a nudist beach………….it's just hard for the first couple of minutes!!! Ian and I work together in food retail and we met through our job almost 13 years ago when Ian moved up from Wales and I moved down from Scotland. Neither of us really knew anyone so a bit of a bromance formed, platonic obviously. We spent a lot of time socialising, visiting some upmarket establishments such as The Paradox Club, The Grafton and many of the local pubs in Kirkby. We did sometimes venture into town with Mathew Street being the usual destination for a spot of dancing. Ian has a unique dancing style, and it's the result of one of his exhibitions I want to tell you about. We used to go to the cavern and Ian's preferred choice of song to dance to was sweet child o’ mine; he had a sort of shimmy manoeuvre going on!  In fact I believe there has been some discussion about it being the first dance! Anyway, back to the story, we'd had a few drinks and headed home, the next day, the call came through: “Rich, I need help, I'm in bed and I think I've put my back out with last night's dancing, I can't move” So Being the good friend that I am, I had a little chuckle, told him I'd sort it and headed to his house telling everyone I bumped into on the way about the situation. Luckily Ian isn't security conscious and the door was unlocked, he also wasn't conscious about housework back then, you shudda seen the place, I headed up the stairs to the sound of some light moaning coming from his bedroom, I really didn't want to open that door………….but I did. Ian was in bed and his opening line was (and I'll tone this down), ” can you switch that flaming light off,  I've been looking at it all flaming night, I feel like a flaming moth!” I turned off the light! He really couldn't move and we needed an ambulance. I quickly hid a few of the beer cans to make it look slightly better and then I made the call. The ambulance arrived and two jovial ambulance men assisted, well I say jovial, they weren't jovial when they arrived but they cheered up quickly enough.  Ian was given gas and air and helped down the stairs to the ambulance which he visited briefly before lashing the back doors open to be violently ill on the street. He went off to hospital where a pulled muscle was diagnosed and he recovered quickly. I have 3 distinct memories from that incident: 1) Ian's dancing is questionable 2) Ian needs to tidy up in future, just in case 3) Ian needs to buy some flaming pyjamas Not long after that, myself, Ian and a couple of other lads decided a holiday was in order. A daily star £99 club 18-30 to Kavos sounded just the job! We wanted to stand out from the crowd so we opted for some colouring of our hair, 3 of us decided just to put a splash of colour on the tops of our heads, a shoe shine effect I believe it's called and it cost us about £12 each. Ian had his own ideas, he decided he fancied being blonde so requested a bleach treatment, which was duly applied, up he pops from the hairdressers sink, looks in the mirror and issues the instruction “do me again”, so the treatment was repeated, Ian again looked in the mirror and still didn't have the look he had planned for so once again the “do me again” phrase was used. Ian usually pays £6 for a trip to the barbers but that particular day there was no change out of £90 and the look he achieved resembled Marilyn Monroe. Onto the trip itself which started off well -with a 31 hour delay to the flight. We didn't know what to do so we just joined the other 125 members of the club 18-30 flight, in the airport bar. Until that day I had never been threatened by a policeman holding a machine gun, nor had I previously had any trouble getting on a plane, but those were the sorts of things that Ian brought to the party back then! Anyway we made it to Corfu and within an hour of arrival we'd slipped on our speedos and were in the sea with our bottles of hooch and having a laugh in the sun. That was the only time Ian saw the sun that week. I'll explain why. Later that evening we were taking advantage of the good vibes and getting into the party mood, Ian doing his sweet child o’ mine shimmy and us watching as he dropped some money and sort of slithered around a pillar to get close enough to the floor to pick it up, he got to the money eventually but didn't really manage to get back up, the rest of us turned away in embarrassment and when we turned back we realised Ian had found a friend, a girl who is best described as a larger lady, was obviously struggling to find a seat and reckoned that Ian looked comfortable, worse than that, her mates were encouraging her to get her daily exercise by getting her to bounce up and down on poor Ian, unfortunately as she was doing this Ian's head was smashing on the marble floor, we decided to intervene and rescued our friend. We were a bit late though as a golf ball sized lump had already formed on his forehead, one diagnosis of severe concussion later and we were making plans to look after Ian for the rest of the week. He was having none of it, he spent the days sleeping and throwing up, and the nights partying and enjoying the atmosphere, he's a committed kind of guy. Like I said, he is committed, not just in play but also in work. Ian and I both work in supermarkets, and my store was undergoing a refit in March, 3 years back. As is normally the case, Ian, being the friend that he is, he pledged his support to me! He said he would be there when the work was starting and help me all the way through the refit. Anyway, refit time arrived and Ian did not. I phoned him and he said he was in Rainhill store which was also going through a refit, Ian knows the manager of that store- Gary and he was just giving Gary a bit of support. Ian assured me that he would come to my store the next day-after he had made sure Gary was ok.  Ian didn't show.   I phoned him again. Same reason for his no show, he was helping Gary. This continued for a number of days and as time went on I heard the name Gary less and less but a new name started coming into the conversation, Sarah, one of the girls that worked in Rainhill!  Sarah this Sarah that- you get the picture! Ian never made it to my store, now we all know why!  Fast forward 3 years and here we are.  Part of my role today was to get the groom here, on time, sober and looking good…….… In the words of meat loaf, 2 outta 3 ain't bad. Joking aside, I've known Ian a long time and he has values that he has always stuck to, he has always been there for me when I've needed him (apart from my refit) and I think I know him pretty well but 3 years ago I noticed a massive change, a lot of my speech has been about laddish stuff that happened a long time ago but since meeting Sarah, Ian has re-evaluated his life. I'm not saying he's boring now, although I've heard it said that if you see two guys chatting and one of them looks bored, the other one is probably Ian. Ian talks a lot about the future, whether it work or personal he's very forward thinking these days, I have a couple of more things for him to think about though,  Today is a very important day and one way to always remember your anniversary is to forget it once. Three little words that will bode well for the future “you're right Sarah ” And my final piece of advice for what it's worth: HOW TO IMPRESS YOUR WIFE- Compliment her, cuddle her, kiss her, caress her, love her, stroke her, tease her, comfort her, protect her, hug her, hold her, spend money on her, wine her and dine her, listen to her, care for her, stand by her, go to the ends of the Earth for her I have another list here for Sarah titled “HOW TO IMPRESS YOUR HUSBAND” – It's a bit shorter-Turn up naked, with a kebab. I think everyone will agree with me that it's been a great day so far and we have a fantastic evening ahead of us, I'm going to speed things along a bit now and get myself sat down, I'd just like to wish Mr and Mrs Williams a long, happy and prosperous life together, marriage is not about finding someone you can live with, it's about finding someone you can't live without. Thank you all for listening and I'd be grateful if you would raise your glasses and join me as I toast the happy couple, Ian and Sarah!!!!