NO LAUGHING MATTER

Toby Young was best man at a Washington

wedding — and nobody laughed when he got up to speak

IT was an experience I'll take to my grave. On Saturday, 29 April I was the best man at a friend's wedding in Washington and, when it came to my speech, I bombed. We're talking Hiroshima. I even broke out in what stand-up comedians refer to as a `flop sweat': the worse the audience reac- tion, the more I sweated. By the end I was standing in a little pool of water, which wasn't much fun considering 1 had shrunk to only six inches. To add to my humilia- tion, the audience included the editor of GQ, the acting editor of the Times and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

My big mistake was not making suffi- cient allowance for the fact that the major- ity of people in attendance were American. The wedding was between Car- oline Bruce, a 29-year-old Hollywood pro- ducer, and Sean Macaulay, an old schoolfriend of mine whose sister goes out with Gordon Brown. At American wed- dings, I discovered, it is simply not done for the best man to tell embarrassing sto- ries about the groom. In particular, any reference to the groom's previous sexual history is completely taboo.

`It's good to see Sean looking so relaxed,' I began in front of an audience of 250 mainly middle-aged Americans. `Apparently, this is the first wedding he's ever been to at which he doesn't feel guilty about having shagged the bride the night before.'

Total silence. I moved swiftly on.

`I'm only going to tell one off-colour joke this evening and I'm going to tell it straight away so Sean can relax. I under- stand that he and Caroline are going to be spending their wedding night here in Washington and I'd like to offer one small piece of advice. . . . ' I reached into my pocket and pulled out an enormous cigar. `When in Rome. . . . '

Deafening silence. A man at the back looked at his watch. I pressed on.

`When I said that was the only off-colour joke I was going to tell this evening, that was a shameless, barefaced lie. But, hey, when in Rome. . . . '

Not only did this not get a single laugh, 1 could sense the audience becoming distinctly hostile. The bride's father, Edward E. Bruce, is a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling and the legal profes- sion was very well represented at the Chevy Chase Country Club that evening. Mr Bruce and his colleagues didn't seem to appreciate having their integrity called into question by a former colonialist. By now, I knew that I'd completely mis- judged the audience. The sensible thing would have been to throw away the rest of my speech, utter a few platitudes about the bride and groom and sit down. Unfortu- nately, I was robbed of the power of deci- sion. Successive waves of anxiety had left me lobotomised. I was on automatic pilot. I'd memorised my lines and I was going to deliver them.

`Back in Britain, we're not used to this level of hospitality,' I continued. 'When I heard how many people had been invited I asked Sean if this was going to be the American equivalent of a British royal wedding. He said, 'Absolutely not. Caro- line and I intend to stay married for longer than three minutes.'

Nothing.

The centrepiece was a bit in which I pre- tended that I'd bought a best-man speech from a website called Speech-0- Matic.com. All you had to do was key in the names of the bride and groom and, hey presto, a fully written speech was e-mailed to you 30 seconds later. The trouble was, I'd got the bride's surname and first name muddled up, so instead of 'Caroline Bruce' I'd keyed in 'Bruce Caroline'. `It's a great honour to be the best man at Sean and Bruce's wedding,' I began, pre- tending to read from the text that had been ,e-mailed to me by Speech-O-Matic.com. 1.3eing the best man at a gay wedding is a little like being the maid of honour at a straight wedding: if I'm the best man, how come Sean's not marrying me?'

If anyone in the audience found this funny, they weren't about to let on. April 29, I later discovered, is Gay Pride Day in America and hundreds of thousands of homosexuals had marched on Washington that afternoon to protest against the fact that gay marriage is still illegal. What I was doing was the equivalent of standing up in front of a white audience on Martin Luther King Day and telling a series of racist jokes.

`I'd like to thank the bridesmaids,' I continued, 'Stan, Greg, Ron and Paul.

Ron is hoping to catch the bouquet today. Earlier he said to me, "You know what my problem is? Always a bridesmaid, never a groom."' Embarrassed cough.

The website bit of the speech ended with a toast: 'May your hair remain thick and lustrous, may your union be blessed with a menagerie of very small dogs, and, if you're ever arrested, can you make sure it's in San Francisco rather than Washing- ton? Out there, they don't read you your Miranda rights, they read you your Car- men Miranda rights. Ladies and gentle- men, the groom and groom.'

More coughing.

My next 'funny' bit involved quoting from a speech Salman Rushdie had given at Bill Buford's wedding, in which the Booker Prize-winner had compared the chances of finding happiness in marriage to the odds of jumping out of a plane at 50,000 feet and landing in a haystack. 'It was the worst best-man speech ever given,' I concluded.

`Until now,' Sean Macaulay shouted at the top of his lungs. It got the first laugh of the evening. It was at this point that I broke out in the 'flop sweat'.

As I struggled on towards the end, sweat falling off me like raindrops, people began to chat noisily among themselves. Some even got up and drifted out of the room. I ended by quoting from a letter Sean had written me in 1984 in which he described his ideal woman. Needless to say, she bore a remarkable resemblance to Caroline. It was no good. By now, no one was listening. I sat down to almost total silence.

Afterwards, Dylan Jones, the editor of GQ, overheard two men discussing my performance in the lavatory. 'So that's the famous British sense of humour,' one said to the other, his voice dripping with sar- casm. Naturally, my first impulse was to blame the American sense of humour, but Gordon Brown put me straight on that. `You had some good jokes,' he said gener- ously, 'but you should have taken your audience into account.' He's right, of course. In Washington, apparently, mar- riage is not something to be taken lightly — unless you're in the White House. No doubt that joke wouldn't have got a single laugh either.