Maybe it’s the way I tell ‘em

3:51pm Friday 20th July 2007

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IF BEING dull was a sport, I'd be captain of the national team. It's horrible to admit, but I could truly bore for England at times, what with the long and tedious anecdotes I simply cannot resist telling.

So I was shocked when a friend rang and asked to use some of my material for an important speech.

He knew I regularly gave talks to groups and wondered if I could lend him a joke.

My pal was addressing a large business group and couldn't think of anything humorous to say to these movers and shakers.

It put me on the spot because I don't really say anything funny when I give speeches. I just talk and talk and try to stare down any of my audience who begin to nod off. I can prattle on unintelligibly for at least an hour without pause and without notes. It's a bit of an art form.

Anyway, I had to come up with a joke for my friend. So I panicked and told him the one about the scruffy job seeker who is asked three ridiculous questions as an interviewer tries to put him off.

The good news about this gag is it has three punchlines. The bad news is they are all terrible.

For instance, the scruff is asked: how many days of the week start with the letter T?

He ponders before replying four.

"Four?" splutters the interviewer. "What are they?"

The yob replies triumphantly: "Tuesday, Thursday... today and tomorrow."

In case you think that's naff, the other two punchlines are even worse and I'll spare readers from them.

But it is a joke I have used successfully lots of times - at WIs, Rotary clubs, schools.

Perhaps, as the great Frank Carson would say, it's the way I tell em.

My friend, however, seemed to take it all a tad too seriously and began scribbling it down and repeating it back to me in a deadpan voice.

I feared for him, I genuinely did.

He was due to make the speech the following day and promised to call me to let me know how he got on. I never heard from him and began worrying I had destroyed his career.

But in the meantime, something extraordinary happened.

A moment of wonderment occurred after I gave a talk to the 41 Club of Beaconsfield. I was the after-dinner speaker and put in my normal non-stop performance - a 30-minute stream of consciousness that some cynics may mistake for utter drivel.

However, club members rewarded this by offering me a donation towards the charity of my choice.

I chose Holmer Green Infant School because the Star had featured a story of how vandals had wrecked its pupils' environmental area.

After I told the club this tale, members generously wrote out a cheque for £100.

I left in a daze. My public speaking had earnt a king's ransom. Perhaps I could give up my day job after all.

But on reflection I realised it wasn't my oratory that did it; it was instead the plight of the school.

So I've got round to thinking that maybe I can get more clubs to donate money to this cause - by agreeing NOT to be their speaker.

I'm positive societies will pay me to stay away after word of my speaking skills gets around.

But there was still the matter of my poor misguided friend. Eventually, this week, he left me a mournful-sounding voicemail on my phone.

My heart beat as I listened. Had he been jeered off for telling my joke?

No, joy of joys, he admitted he had decided to leave it out of his speech shortly before going on stage. He'd road-tested it in front of a colleague who had sat in stony silence.

Still, it's encouraging to remember that when I was young, people used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.

Well, they're not laughing now.

* Anyone who wants to give money to charity in exchange for me NOT being their after-dinner speaker, should contact me.