2012
Courtney Blair: 'If anyone can turn him, Jen it’s you', For Rob and Jen - 2010
2010, Shaw Hill Golf and country Club, Lancashire
To be honest, I am a little surprised that he is getting married to a lady today, because there was always rumours going around the family that, y’know, that Rob might not be ... well we thought he might be gay. So I was trying to sum up some of the stories, but instead I put it into a bit of a song, so if you just bear with me.
What’s up Rob? It’s only a bloody song.
Think you’re outdoing me, pal?
So I’ve done it to the tune of ‘Matchstalk Men, and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs’. I know it’s a favourite of some people here, so we’ll er, we’ll go with it.
So here we are, it’s 2010
A beautiful bride by the name of Jen,
Fantastic day so far’s been had by all,
I hate to be the one to say,
I always thought, that Rob was gay
Did no one read the warning signs at all?
Well it started sat on Santa’s knee,
I was six, our Rob was three
An action man was my polite request.
Then Rob sat down with his list in hand
On Santa’s lap, in this wonderland
And said, ‘I’d like a Barbie doll the best’
So here’s to Rob and Jen, on your wedding day
You were made for each other in every way
Well Rob you’ve got a beautiful wife
And I wish you a happy life
But I still believe that our Rob could be gay.
Well I was flabbergasted, struck with shock,
I couldn’t believe that Rob liked ... [laugh]
Frocks.
But I was a modern brother of the day.
There’s nothing wrong wearing comfy shoes
And meeting men in public loos,
But he’s our kid and we’ll love him anyway.
So here’s to Rob and Jen, on your wedding day
You were made for each other in every way.
Well you know you’ve got more friends than most
Raise your glasses to a toast,
To Rob and Jen, on their wedding day.
Well over twenty years have been and gone,
And here he is saying Jen’s the one,
If anyone can turn him, Jen it’s you,
He’ll steal your products to his hair,
And prance around in your underwear,
But at least he leaves the seat down on the loo.
So here’s to Rob and Jen, on your wedding day,
You were made for each other in every way,
Well Rob you’ve got a beautiful wife,
And I wish you both a happy life,
But in the laws want grand kids by the end of May.
So here’s to Rob and Jen, on your wedding day,
You were made for each other in every way.
Well charge your glasses to a toast ...
To Rob and Jen, on your wedding day.
Benedict: 'Love without truth has no meaning', for wedding Ben & Françoise Meyer - 2013
7 September 2013, Bastide St Mathieu, France
Question ... Oh, that's loud ... If I were to ask each of you to come up with a word that sums up your life, your hopes, your expectations you might pick one of the following: happiness, friendship, laughter, but there is a life-long journey, a quest, a search for two little words. Two simple little words, the success or failure of which will sum up much of your life, your story, and those two words are true love. True love.
For girls, the journey starts early. From the first moment when you put a poster up on your bedroom wall of your favourite boy band. I love you, One Direction. Until later in life, when you get together with a bunch of girlfriends, a romantic comedy in the DVD player, and a bottle of wine and you say "Wow, that's true love. I wish my life were like that."
For boys, the journey starts just that little bit later. The first 12 years, you don't notice girls at all, but then you hit 13 and a half. Suddenly, your body is a tsunami of hormones, and you notice that there are these girl things everywhere. And all this happens just at the moment when you lose control of your voice.
When these two words enter your mind, true and love, you are going to own them, you are going to possess them. How do you know? Because the chemicals in your body are telling you so. But, I thought, there I was, 13 and a half, starting this journey, looking for these two words, true and love, and I thought, well let's be smart. Let's get ahead of the game.
Shakespeare! I mean, the greatest writer in any language. For years, people with no imagination had been telling me that anything remotely romantic was just like Romeo and Juliet. Oh, look at them, Ben, they're just like Romeo and Juliet. Bless. Well, no they're not. These people had clearly never read the play. I did read Romeo and Juliet at 13 and a half, and the first thing you discover is that Romeo and Juliet are themselves 13 and a half. And you think, that can't be right. Juliet will be there on her balcony in Verona, the warm Italian air caressing her soft flesh. "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" And he would be in the shadows below, going, "Leave me alone. Your family just don't like me."
But, I carried on reading anyway, and it gets worse. Romeo goes out with his best friend, Mercutio. They run into Tybalt. Tybalt kills Mercutio. Romeo kills Tybalt. Romeo runs away. To make the situation better, Juliet takes drugs to make her appear dead. Romeo comes back, thinks Juliet's dead, takes poison. Juliet wakes up, sees Romeo dead, stabs herself in the chest. Dead, dead, dead, everybody dead. Mummy, mummy, are relationships always this complicated?
Okay, so maybe literature had let me down, but why don't we try history? Better still, let's try French history? Because, I've never met a Frenchman who doesn't think he's the world's most sensitive lover.
Abelard and Heloise. The worlds of the early 12th century fill my mind with romance and passion and longing and, like, wow. This is good stuff. Okay, it's the early 12th century, which probably meant that they smelled really bad, had no teeth, and were covered in warts. But, even if they're ugly, surely love would work. And it's true. I mean, they were deeply in love, but Heloise's family did not approve of the match. So they trap Abelard one night and they castrate him. I'm like, mummy. Mummy, I'm not sure I want to do this relationship thing at all, mummy.
And so, there I was, totally unprepared, 13 and a half. Looking for these words, true and love. And I started playing the game that we all play, the dating game. Yes, let's play. Dating game is simple. It goes something like this, two people go out for dinner and they spend the evening lying to one another. For boys, the rules are simple. You sit there pretending to be interested and engaged. Oh, that's fascinating. But, all you're really thinking is "Oh my God, how long does all the talking have to go on for before the sex starts?"
For girls, you walk in, and the first question you ask is a question that no straight man has ever asked himself: "What star sign are you?" Inside you go, "What?" But, you say, "Well, I'm Aquarius." And she'll say, "That means you're intelligent, sensitive, you follow your own path and you're deeply intellectual. Deep down, you're kind of romantic." And you say, "Wow, that's amazing, it's like you've shone a torch deep into my soul." But, what you're really thinking is, "Does this mean we're having sex, or not?"
Then we get to the main course, and she'll turn to you and say, "I'm a bit of a romantic, you know." Warning, this doesn't mean she has any concept of romance at all. What this really means is it doesn't matter how mad she is, how emotionally unstable, she could have smashed up your flat, stolen your car and set fire to your underwear, and you're still meant to go, "I love you, darling. Why don't you take these flowers and pick up that nice pair of shoes you saw the other day?"
It is playing the dating game. You realise, Oscar Wilde was right when he said "Experience is the name we give our mistakes." So, there I am, sitting in my smashed up flat, a small pile of underwear smouldering on the carpet. And I'm just wondering, where's my car? And a friend will come in and lay the biggest cliché on you of all. "Is that underwear? Don't worry, Ben. You'll find love, when you're least looking for it." And you're like, "Thanks."
Fast forward to 2011. My father returns me and said "Hey, Ben, let's go on holiday." First time in 32 years. I said, "Yeah, dad, why not." He said, "Let's go on a cruise." I'm like, "Cruise, that's just a way of moving fat people about." He said, "I'm paying." I said, "Dad, I'm there."
So, there it was, 7th of November, 2011. I'm striding manfully aboard the seaborne sojourning ship moored at the very tip of South America, with not a thought of romance in my mind. I walk around the deck, noting to my personal satisfaction just how fat many of the passengers, indeed, are. I walk into the on ship boutique, and my world comes slamming to a halt and my life changes forever. There, standing before me, is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. I turn inward. Brain, brain, I need clever things. Clever things, brain, that are going to make me appear sensitive, intelligent, and really well educated. But, at that moment, my inner voice had decided to become 13 and a half again. "Hello, you're pretty. We're on a ship."
This is bad. This is very, very bad. Somehow, I've got to age 34 years in 30 seconds. A feat of emotional development that no man has achieved in 100,000 years of human history. But, in [inaudible 00:08:22], let's find out what this vision of beauty is saying. I move with [inaudible 00:08:28]. The beautiful lips open, and all these strange noises came tumbling out. I'm like, "What the hell is a choose." Nightmare. I leave. Francoise hadn't noticed me at all. This was 'cause she was shopping. And when Francoise shops, you could set fire to her legs and it would go something like this, "Is that Prada, 2014 collection? Have you got it in blue? Can someone smell burning?"
Halfway through the cruise, I'm invited to a formal dinner. I don't really want to go, but you know, nothing else to do. We turn up early. The place card to my left says I'll be sitting next to a Mrs. Francoise Meyer. I imagine she's going to be a very pleasant, if somewhat overweight, American lady who's going to spend the evening telling me just how much she loves my accent.
Francoise comes to the table and sits next to me. And straightaway, it is clear that we are having the conversation. Each of you, at some point in your life, will have had the conversation. Or, a friend of yours will have had the conversation. And, when you've had the conversation, or a friend of yours has had the conversation, they will call you up the next day. And it will going something like this, "Oh my God, Ben, I went out on a date last night. We sat up until 5:00 in the morning, we talked about everything, oh my God." The conversation is when two souls interlock, intertwine, intermingle. If Francoise had been in a romantic comedy, her face would have filled the screen and everything else would have dissolved into a soft focus blur.
We got to the end of the dinner, and she got up, vanish at warp speed. I thought, "Wow, how can anyone move so quickly on pointy shoes?" I couldn't stop thinking about her, but I didn't want to chase her out. I didn't want to do the sad, bald, middle aged man chasing much younger, beautiful woman thing. "Hi, I have no hair, but I have a very very fast car." Because, it's just not cool. I didn't realise that she was thinking about me a lot also, because she came running up to me in Montevideo and said "Look, Ben, I really want to see you. Here are my details. Blah, blah..." On the outside, I played it rather cool, "Yeah honey, that'd be great." On the inside, I was like, "I am a man god and she wants my babies."
It is a good thing for you ladies that you don't really see what's going on in men's minds. We go out for a first date in Buenos Aires. Perfect first date town, and a curious thing happened. These two words, true and love, which, throughout the dating game, have been growing further and further apart, until they were in separate time zones, had decided to come and wait, and lie in wait for me in the gutter of a Buenos Aires boulevard.
We were walking from Lavalle. I had three or four mojitos happily circling in my blood system. And we were arguing about the best way to find more mojitos, and I turned and I looked at her with the stillness of absolute certainty. And I knew she was the woman I was going to marry. It's like when you listen to music, a great symphony or concerto, you don't hear it with the ear, but it resonates in your chest. It is like you're hearing a tune that you'd always known.
Other people pick up on this vibe straight away. We went to another bar for some more mojitos. And there was a very beautiful young couple sitting behind Francoise, and the good guy kept on looking up at me smiling. I got up and some point, and I thought, "I need to make room for some more mojitos." So, I go to the lavatory and I'm standing there in the urinal, zip. And this guy follows me in and stands right next to me, zip. And he looks at me, I look at him. He smiles at me, I smile at him. And he turns to me, but I'm just thinking, "Hey, what is the etiquette in Argentina for talking to a man who has his penis out?" And he turns to me and says, "You are with a very beautiful woman. You both look very happy."
We live in a cynical world. We all have days where you wake up, you read the paper, you switch on the news or read history, and it's endless stories of just how shit we are to one another. And you think, "I love people, but I hate mankind." Jean Paul Sartre famously said, "Hell is other people." But, with these two words, true and love, you realise heaven can be another person.
You realise, this feeling, this thought, you don't rationalise it, you don't invent it, you don't create it. It is the birthright of a thousand generations before you, which passes from generation to generations. It drops into your world, explodes with golden light, and it is your job to keep it going for generations to come. It is the best of us. It is what makes life worthwhile.
It took science until 1905, with Einstein's theory of general relativity, to work out that time itself is not a constant, it shifts and alters. Lovers, of course, have known this for centuries. Because, when you're lying in bed next to the woman you love, every moment vanishes, and yet every moment exists in eternity. Space itself loses meaning, because when you're lying in bed next to the woman you love, the universe is bounded by the four walls of that room and nothing beyond exists. You realise that the ancient Greeks were right. They thought that the soul and the breath were one. The word inspiration, to seek higher things, comes from to inspire, to breath in. So, when you're lying in bed next to the woman you love, and your breath is dancing and mingling, and the warm air above you, it is your souls themselves that are dancing and blending into one. It's also the reason, when you really love someone, they never smell bad.
The final thing you realise is this. This lifelong journey, this search, hasn't been for two words at all, but one. Because love, without truth, has no meaning. Love, without truth, simply cannot exist at all. So, if you were to ask me to come up with a word to sum up my life, my story, I would pick a single word. A simple, little word. And that word is, of course, love.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would notice these small bottles sitting before you. I finally recommend that you open them now. Well, you've already played the game, thank you very much. And I want you to toast to the word that saves us, to love itself. So, ladies and gentlemen, not just of Francoise, the most amazing woman in the world, but to love itself. Let us toast to love. Thank you for playing.
Kevin Brereton: 'Little did I know that five years later, I'd be falling in love with my best friend', Kevin and Rachael - 2010
Uploaded 11 July 2010, United Kingdom
Give me a P-I-R Arrrrrrh
Distinguished guests, family friends and JT.
Rachael and I would like to thank you for joining us to celebrate our special day with us. I can honestly say it wouldn’t have been the same without you. It would have been considerably cheaper ...
Firstly I’d like to say a big thank you to John and pat for producing such a beautiful, strong, intelligent, and independent daughter.
John, thanks for the warning about the extreme physical violence I would receive should I not treat Rachael in the manner she deserves.
But you can trust me when I say that I will always love her, and protect her.
I’d like to thank John and Pat for welcoming me into their family. I feel totally at home with them. Although Pat, I don’t think it’s necessary for you to do those naked bombs on me at the villa.
Talking of Pat, would you mind standing up please, do a twirl so everyone can see you, okay that’s enough of that, you give her a little bit of limelight...
I’m sure you’ll all agree that Pat looks absolutely stunning today.
Now they say, that if you want to know what you’re wife’s going to look like when she’s older, just look to the mother. Well Pat, I’m looking -- and I’m liking.
Mum and Dad -- I’d like to thank you for producing such an incredible son. I know, I know, you can’t believe how fortunate you are to have me, but as everybody here today knows, this isn’t about me, it’s about Rachael.
Seriously though, you’ve always been there when I needed you, and supported me through everything I’ve done and thank you for that.
I’m sure you’ll all agree that Rachael looks absolutely incredible, amazing today. Seeing you walk down the aisle made me think that maybe I’m the one whose got the best out of this deal.
Believe it or not ... did I say it the wrong way round?
Knew I should have read the card.
Now believe it or not, one of us in this relationship can be quite arrogant.
They can also be pig headed, stubborn -- they think they know it all from how to cut grass, to how things should operate in the bedroom. But luckily for me, Rachael has been patient, open and willing to learn.
On a serious note, though, I’d like everyone to know how lucky I feel to have Rachael as my partner in life.
We met 13 years ago, and quickly grew to be very close.
Little did I know that five years later, I’d be falling in love with my best friend.
I remember our first night spent together at Vicki’s house. Which at the time had no doors on the bedrooms, I’m really sorry Vicki. [Inaudible]
And thinking Rach might take me too seriously, I uttered those immortal words, ‘Rach, I just want you to know, this is just for fun.’ Can you say, fucking hell?
Unfortunately for me, Vicki was listening in the next room, and I was subjected to a huge amount of abuse for the next six months. Or was it four years? However it wasn’t really just for fun because within two weeks I’d fallen head over heels, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Rachael is caring funny intelligent and beautiful, I’m so lucky that you lowered yourself, to me.
I’ve had the best eight years of my life with you, and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my days by your side.
I must say it’s not always easy being Rachael partner. I try to keep myself in shape for her over the years. Is she dissatisfied with my body? A tiny part of me says yes.
Rachael, thank you for marrying me and loving me so much.
Ladies and gentleman, please be upstanding for probably the most important toast I’ll ever make.
To my life and my absolute world -- to Rachael.
And there’s more. Finish on a peak they say.
Leah, thank you for being the best bridesmaid we could have ever hoped for. You look absolutely stunning today, which I’m sure everyone has said.
And we’d like to give you a gift, but not just for being a great bridesmaid, but for being a wonderful daughter as well. It’s a load of Tesco’s shopping bags.
I’d also like to thank Helen, Vicki, Jo and Lucy, for all the help organising Rachael ahead of today. Although she can be quite well organised, when it came to this wedding, she genuinely didn’t know that we were supposed to have a guest book, or even a wedding cake.
Thanks to Pearce, Ali and Andrew for being my ushers today. There wasn’t much for you to do but look good, and although you might have let me down somewhat on that front. I understand that you tried your best.
Kim, some more tears might be coming here. I want to thank Kim for agreeing to be my best man. We’ve shared some of the best times together over the last eighteen years, [video runs out]