The Best Man's Speech

Oscar met Conor in a student apartment in Madrid, when Conor was teaching English there and Oscar was studying engineering. They shared a tiny kitchen, a broken washing machine and a love of bad soccer teams, and after that year they became best friends. So when Conor called to say he was getting married to Aoife in Kilkenny, in Ireland, Oscar was delighted. Then Conor added: "And I want you to be my best man."

In Ireland, Conor explained, the best man gives a speech at the wedding dinner. It must be funny, it must be kind, and it must not be too long. And it would be in English, in front of two hundred Irish people. Oscar said yes immediately. Afterwards, he sat on his sofa for an hour without moving.

His first draft was a disaster. It was a list of short sentences: "Conor is my friend. He is funny. We lived together. He cooked badly. Aoife is nice. Congratulations." Everything was true, but it sounded like a shopping list. He read it out loud and felt embarrassed.

Oscar asked for help from Aoife's cousin, Niamh, who taught English in Dublin. They had video calls every Sunday. "Your ideas are good," she told him, "but they aren't connected. You need linkers. Words that take the listener by the hand." She sent him a list: first of all, however, although, because of this, as a result, on the other hand, in the end.

The second draft was better. The fifth was much better. By the eighth, Oscar was writing sentences like: "Although Conor is a terrible cook, he always cooked for me when I had exams. As a result, I passed everything, but I also lost five kilos." Niamh laughed for a full minute at that one. In the ninth draft, he took out two jokes that were funny in Spanish but not in English. In the tenth, he added a story about the day Conor first talked about Aoife.

On the wedding day, the hotel in Kilkenny was full of music and noise. Oscar had his speech in his jacket pocket, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn't eat. When it was time, he stood up, took out the paper and dropped it straight into a glass of red wine.

For a second, there was silence. Then Oscar realized something: after ten drafts, he knew every word. He put the wet paper on the table and began. "First of all, I'm sorry about my accent. However, Conor's Spanish is much worse, so I think we're even." The room exploded with laughter.

He told them about the tiny kitchen, the terrible cooking and the night Conor came home and talked about Aoife until three in the morning. "In the end," he said, raising his glass, "I lost a roommate, but Conor found the right person. To Conor and Aoife!" Two hundred people stood up. Niamh, at the back, gave him a thumbs-up.