The focus of this book is on that brief but terrifying prospect: the Best Man's speech. The book includes techniques for using stories, jokes and quotations that will lift your speech well above the bare necessities, helping you not only to make the speech, but also to enjoy it. More than just a guide to the Best Man's speech, this book is a one-stop guide to being a really effective, all round, Best Man. Above all its purpose is to help you enjoy your role as Best Man and to make it an occasion that honours the groom and his chosen bride. Contents: 1. Your complete guide to being best man 2. Myths and legends 3. Duties of the best man 4. Planning your speech 5. Preparation 6. Writing the speech in eight steps 7. Things to avoid 8. The big day 9. Delivery 10. Anecdotes 11. Jokes and quotes 12. Traditional and celebrity sayings 13. Sample toasts - beginnings, middles and endings 14. Mixed marriages Sample speeches

How to make a great, best man's speech - and a guide to being a great best man. In this book Phillip Khan-Panni uses his expertise as a champion professional speaker to help the best man with the terrifying prospect of writing and delivering The Speech. He guides you on the vital preparation of your speech and tells you how to use stories, jokes and quotations that will lift it well above the bare necessities. With the author`s help and his professional tips and techniques, you will be able to make a really entertaining and moving speech that will be remembered for a long time to come. You might even enjoy making it as much as the guests do hearing it! There are also checklists and further advice to help you organise the whole occasion so that the big day honours the groom and his bride and thoroughly impresses their friends and relations

When a special event or anniversary comes up, we buy cards to send. An amazing number of people take time to choose cards with the right words - short poems to express the good wishes they want to send. To me that indicates a love of poetry. And poetry does not have to be the kind of thing we had to learn and recite at school. It just has to be an attractive (and succinct) way of expressing a thought. In recent times I have taken to writing my own verses in cards for anniversaries and special occasions. When the mood takes me I write poems about love and friendship, and even about my travels. My wife persuaded me to collect them and put them in this book. They are written in a variety of styles - wouldn't it be boring if they were all in the same rhythm? Some of the poems rhyme, in the old fashioned way, and others do not. As I have written elsewhere, the three essential elements of poetry are rhyme, rhythm and rhetoric - any two will do. By rhetoric I mean evocative language that affects and influences the thinking or emotions of others. Often, when I am writing to someone I care about, I may glance through a book of poetry, and a line or two will provide just the right kind of inspiration. Perhaps this book will do the same for you. I have laid out the poems in sections to make it easy for you to find the right words to suit your moment. If you feel like adapting any of my poems for one of your own friends, just go ahead and do so. Just put at the bottom: Adapted from a poem by Phillip Khan-Panni.