A new career? - part 3

And so time for the entertainment to start, to whit, the speeches which meant the start of his duties.

He rather presciently introduced David, the bride's father, as "the incomparable Mr David Hannis" and certainly we at Bogun Towers have never heard a speech to compare to it. The opening line of "one gets all kinds of brides, some are fat." was certainly a brave call and probably not saved with the second line, "and some are fetching, now Christine fetch me a beer".

From these rather unpromising foundations he did manage to somehow save it and delivered a splendidly emotional speech.

Next up the groom. Sadly the highlight was one of the heckles. Whilst explaining that he had realised he was being welcomed to the family some while back because David entrusted him with the keys to the camper van Wombat, the best man, called out, "still not welcome in the house then."

One is usually expecting the best man to be given a gift of cufflinks but breaking with that rather dull tradition Chris presented Wombat with a pair of ice axes. Engraved ice axes.
We do wonder what the poor engraver must have thought when asked to work his magic on them.

And so to complete the first part of the evening the great Wombat took to the stage. A hugely entertaining tale of skiing in a sumo suit, their (Chris's friends) despair that he would ever meet a decent girl and their joy at him proving them so wrong.

With the speeches out of the way the feast could begin. To add some excitement each table was entrusted with carving its own joint, somewhat less excitingly our subject had to deliver a Health and Safety lecture about how to use the carving knives.

Next up in the entertainment was a Neil Diamond soundalikey. Despite our subject's best endeavours to get some decent material to introduce him he opted out of introducing him, truthfully, as "just in from the Cock and Bottle in Ilford" and set
on "just in from Vegas".

Despite these unpromising beginnings he delivered a quite splendid set of all the old favourites before handing over to the DJ and the amateur night entertainment.

Each table had been invited to lay on their own entertainment and 3 tables took on the challenge.

First up was Nia who belted out that great Welsh song, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochn. We can safely say she has a fine pair of lungs.

The highlight of the entire weekend was to follow with Izzy Wombat volunteering to do a solo of Take That's "The Stars are Coming out Tonight"...on Helium. Words cannot begin to do justice to the sight of Izzy surrounded by her sister, mum and dad passing her Helium ballons at regular intervals whilst she banged out the tune. One of the funniest things we have ever seen.

And finally the one minute version of Four Weddings and a Funeral was a real treat for any thespians in the crowd and we thank the Pofydd, Mr and Mrs Churcy, Matt and Olwen, Sarah and Chris for their fine performances.

And so with the entertainment out of the way his last duty slowly hove into view and he grandly announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen it's been an emotional wedding...even the cake's in tiers." and the splendid cake (constructed by TCO) was cut and finally he could start drinking.

By this stage in the evening our reports tend towards the vague but your correspondent, in deference to our subject's relative abstinence, was, similarly, abstemious and so we can report that the evening finally closed with a few hardcore stalwarts swigging scotch and smoking cigars (with a couple of people (Boris and Harriet) gently snoring in the corner).First up, of course,