I spent far too many weekends in my 20s and 30s attending weddings. I always felt it was appropriate to turn up, get pissed, make an arse of myself before lying down in a comfortable gutter for the night. Something I carried seamlessly into our own wedding day, other than the gutter thing but only because the distance between bar and bed was carryable.

And for a few of those lost weekends, the additional responsibility of being promoted to Best Man was thrust upon me. Really, really bad idea. I was forever losing rings, speeches and, on one memorable occasional, the groom. My organisations skills hit the high water mark of assembling a few random people at a place of Worship, before wandering off to check the bar opening time.

I lacked the respect for the job, the willpower to ignore the delights of a free bar, and my speeches were delivered – at best – adequately. And, inevitably, properly plastered.

You would have thought with that history, no-one would ever ask me again and yet I’m sad to report, another disaster is almost upon us. And worse even that, all of my family will be there. Those for which I am directly responsible, and a wider group to whom I related.

My old brother is getting married. In a rash of Senior Moment Insanity, he offered me the opportunity to make a fool of him. In a rather more studied and inspired moment, he split the job between me and the middle bro.

Now playing to our strengths, that’s him with awesome organisational skills and the ability to herd cats and me being a lazy fucker occasionally known for writing amusing words, he took on the job of sorting out absolutely everything leaving me only to craft and present the speech.

This seemed an absolutely brilliant idea right up until the point when I realised what my responsibilities were in this arrangement. This can be summed up by repeating an earlier conversation whilst I was bemoaning the unfairness of my lot:

I am not looking forward to this speech you know

Why Not, you love being the centre of attention, they’ll all be pissed what can go wrong?

They might not laugh. They might all hate me. My trousers might explode. Whole episode is a cluster fuck waiting to happen

What? Total bollocks. I thought you liked writing funny stuff

That’s different, there isn’t an audience

Yes there is, you just can’t see them

It’s not the same

It is

IT BLOODY ISN’T

I am shitting the bed. I had no problem writing the speech, but that’s not going to help me delivering it. Because one thing I do know, reading off a prepared text is going to be about as funny as a brain tumour.

It’s too late to back out now. Most of my living relatives, people I’ve known since school and my own little family unit will all be watching. And I’ll be talking too fast, thinking too slow all while trying to stay sober enough to command fair use of my legs.

I hope my trousers do explode; at least that’s guaranteed to be funny.