If only Pippa’s toe-curling Best Man had asked ME for advice!

I’d have told him no lewd gags — and DON’T compare the bride to a spaniel...

EVERY wedding is a bit of a circus – Pippa Middleton’s millionpound union with James Matthews was an extravaganza worthy of Barnum & Bailey – and the Best Man’s speech is surely the high-wire act.

It’s one of the most eagerly-anticipated highlights of the day. Get it right, everyone’s cheering. Get it wrong, and it’s a disaster, with bride and groom left furious, their parents offended and everyone else squirming in their seats. I know. I’ve been there. In my time, I’ve made the Best Man’s speech more than once, and as a father, brother, cousin and friend, I’ve listened to scores of other people’s efforts down the years. It’s fraught with danger. But it can be managed – if you know the rules.

Unfortunately, it seems that Best Man Justin Johannsen tumbled off the tightrope in high style at Pippa’s wedding.

His toe-curling address not only outstayed its welcome, but also featured an unhappy series of lewd jokes about the happy couple that left the guests gasping for air.

In his ten-minute address, he said of Matthews: ‘After the wedding, he was going to Bangor for two weeks.’ He also referred to Pippa’s famous posterior, saying she should ‘buttock clench on the star jumps’ during the wedding dance.

He made an unsuitable joke about his trip to a gay bar with Matthews. And, in the rudest gag of all, Johannsen compared Pippa to Matthews’s spaniel, Rafa – ‘Beautiful, energetic, loyal . . . great behind’.

In case he’s asked again (which is unlikely, but you never know), here are the golden rules of speaking at weddings.

Stick to them, and you won’t go wrong . . .

DON’T CALL THE GROOM UNFAITHFUL . . . OR GAY

JOURNALIST Toby Young confessed to giving the worst Best Man’s speech ever at the wedding of his old school friend Sean Macaulay in Washington in 2000.

‘It’s good to see Sean looking so relaxed,’ Young told the audience of 250 lawyers. ‘This is the first wedding he’s ever been to at which he doesn’t feel guilty about having sh **** d the bride the night before.’ This was greeted with silence.

Young pulled a cigar out of his pocket and made a reference to President Clinton’s use of a cigar in a sex act with his mistress, Monica Lewinsky. More silence. Young went on to joke that the bride – whose name was Caroline Bruce – was a man called Bruce Caroline.

After the wedding, Gordon Brown, then British chancellor of the exchequer, who was going out with (and later married) the bridegroom’s sister, gave Young some excellent advice for all Best Men. ‘You had some good jokes,’ Brown said, ‘but you should have taken your audience into account.’

NEVER BE RUDE ABOUT THE BRIDE

AT every wedding, the focus, quite rightly, is on the beautiful bride. (She is always a beautiful bride, even when she’s a size 22 with a face like a boot.) This is not the moment to say anything rude about her: no smut, no innuendos and no personal remarks.

At a wedding I went to recently, the Best Man decided to focus on the well-endowed bride’s figure and made the phrase ‘big boobs’ the cornerstone of his speech. We were not amused.

NO SMUTTY JOKES FROM THE INTERNET

IT’S never a good idea to fill your speech with risque jokes – especially ones you’ve found on the internet. Popular examples include: ‘They say that the Best Man’s speech is the groom’s worst five minutes of the day. The bride’s worst five minutes come later on tonight.’

Another is: ‘I don’t want to keep the happy couple any longer than I have to as I know they are itching to go upstairs and put their things together.’

Needless to say: avoid. What your audience wants are warm, true but fundamentally innocuous stories about your friend – not recycled ‘funnies’.

Avoid horrid personal revelations. At one wedding I went to, the Best Man thought it funny to reveal how the groom wet his bed at boarding school. It wasn’t.

At another, the Best Man was keen to let us know that he knew that the bride had an interesting tattoo in an intimate location – and wondered out loud if the groom had yet come across it.

NEVER MENTION THE EXES

AT too many weddings, the Best Man seems to think it’s entertaining to refer to other boyfriends that the bride may have had – and vice versa. Even if it’s true, even if they’re there (especially if they’re there), we don’t want to know.

And if one of the parties has been married before, it’s like the war: for God’s sake, don’t mention it. My father had a sister called Hope, who died. Hope’s widower then married her best friend. At their wedding, my father in his speech described his brother-in-law’s new union ‘as the triumph of experience over Hope’.

He thought he was hilarious. Absolutely no one else did.

At another second wedding I attended, the Best Man, who had also been Best Man at the groom’s first wedding, proposed the toast to the wrong couple.

‘To Hector and Nancy,’ he said happily. A stunned silence. ‘To Hector and Nancy,’ he repeated, urging us onto our feet. ‘To Hector and Nancy,’ he roared for the third and final time. ‘To Hector and Ruth,’ we replied weakly.

ELABORATE STUNTS ALWAYS FALL FLAT

JUST stick to the speech; no rude words, no comedy routines, no elaborate stunts. In Brides magazine last year, screenwriter Evan Marc Katz told how his Best Man’s comedy routine had ruined his otherwise perfect wedding, which took place on a yacht at sunset.

The Best Man’s speech completely failed to mention the bride or groom. Instead, he performed his own 20-minute joke routine.

When Katz eventually told him to end the speech, the Best Man moved on to his final trick. The kitchen doors opened, to reveal waiters carrying a huge fridge. They placed it in front of the happy couple, and out popped a dwarf in a jester’s costume.

‘Holy **** ing Christ,’ the groom screamed into the microphone. The bride’s Catholic family were stony-faced. The wedding is still referred to by their friends and family as the ‘dwarf wedding’.

STAND UP, SPEAK UP, SHUT UP

THE golden rule of speech-making is simply: ‘Stand up, speak up, shut up.’ Don’t be on your feet for more than six minutes, max. The unfortunate Johannsen burbled on for ten. He also had the misfortune to do it at 11.30pm.

As any seasoned speaker knows, it is impossible to speak successfully after 11pm. The audience is too tired or too tipsy. Even if your gags are good, at that time of night, they will fall flat.

NO QUOTES, EVEN FROM THE SIMPSONS

YOUR own words, heartfelt and true, will sound more genuine than Dickens or Shakespeare. Or Homer Simpson. At one disastrous wedding, celebrated on the bridal website Bride & Groom Direct, the father of the bride was horrified when the Best Man quoted Homer. ‘Marriage is great,’ he said. ‘It’s living with your best friend, but you get to touch her boobs!’

AVOID SPEAKING IN KLINGON IF YOU CAN

IT’S best to speak in English if your audience is English-speaking. One doomed Best Man, a Star Trek fan, gave the whole speech in Klingon – the alien language from the cult series. The only clue it was over was when he returned to his seat after toasting ‘the bride and groom’ – or ‘be IH je IoDnal’, as he put it in Klingon.

BE SAFE RATHER THAN SORRY

FINALLY, don’t take risks. A soso speech is soon forgotten, but a disastrous one will live with you for the rest of your life.

Before he got up to speak on Saturday night, Johannsen should have looked at his notes and simply scrubbed out all the stuff about gay bars, buttock-clenching and sexed-up spaniels.

A wedding is a celebration, so celebrate! Tell the crowd why the groom is the best bloke you’ve ever known and tell it from the heart. Don’t embarrass him.

At my wedding (44 years ago), the Best Man was my best friend, the actor Simon Cadell (you may remember him from the TV series, Hi-de-Hi!).

Apart from dropping the ring in the register office so that it disappeared into the grating, he performed his duties well.

It was a quiet wedding (there were only four of us there; if it cost £100 in all I’d be surprised), but at lunch after the ceremony, Simon insisted on a speech. I remember it in full. He raised his glass to us and said: ‘Good luck. Be happy.’

That’s all you need, really.