What's in a speech?
- 27 Sep 06, 07:53 PM
Once, politicians used to practise their speeches by filling their mouths full of pebbles to practise voice projection. Things have changed a bit since Demosthenes' time.
Nowadays politicians practise on autocue the night before in the conference hall. One year we all got a preview of Iain Duncan Smith's speech which was accidentally broadcast on our ringmain. The quiet man had cranked up the volume by mistake.
So as a form of political communication have speeches dated a bit over two and half thousand years? An old fashioned tub thumping style doesn't work well on television. Neil Kinnock who was one of the country's best orators in a hall was often disastrous on TV. His delivery was once compared to a tortoise trying to reach orgasm. And you must remember the Sheffield rally.
Day Three in the Big Conference House and the strains are already beginning to show.
We talk to Pakistan鈥檚 President Musharraf about the so-called 鈥渨ar on terror鈥; how police have been using legal loopholes to avoid speeding convictions; and Martha Kearney reports from Manchester on Bill Clinton鈥檚 speech at the Labour Party conference.
Heads of state usually hold off publishing memoirs until they have left office behind and are unfettered by diplomatic niceties. But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has chosen to publish an account of his experiences as premier - including details of events surrounding the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington - while still in office. His claim that one US official used threats to secure Pakistan's cooperation in the so-called war on terror has caused much controversy.