Status Anxiety | 27 June 2009

By my epic standards, this was an extremely polite best man’s speech

It never ceases to amaze me that I am still asked to speak in public. If I am not the worst orator of my generation, I must be a close second. The last time I performed an after-dinner speaking gig was in Bath and the organisation concerned was so appalled it asked for its money back. ‘My delegates are not prudes,’ wrote the booker to my agent, ‘but the use of the “C” word in polite company is to me unacceptable and to use it twice was just insult to injury.’

In my defence, both uses of ‘C’ word occurred in the course of telling a single anecdote about encountering Gordon Ramsay on a flight back from Los Angeles. I came across him in one of the galleys, bent double over a stainless steel work surface and looking like he’d just personally prepared 375 meals.