Fats does a best man speech

Last week, I got to be best man for a very good friend of mine, The Stef. As part of my duties (not losing the rings, not losing the groom), I got to make a speech.

Here is that speech. I have edited it for my blog readership, which includes changing or deleting names, crossing out in-jokes that you won't get, cutting out personal information and slicing out bits that would have made sense in the room but not on this blog.

Fats does a best man speech

I must start by thanking The Stef to allowing me to be best man... When he asked me to be best man, I'm not ashamed to admit, it made me cry. You now rank alongside my all-time blubbings, including the day John Peel died, when Jenson Button won the world championship, and that episode of In The Night Garden when Makka Pakka didn't tidy the Plinky Plonk and Iggle Piggle lost his blanket.

So let's unravel this mystery man. Think back a time long ago. Imagine a young, eager hip hop fan stuck in the rough end of town, a white rap kid in a black urban music world, not the best-dressed, not the best haircut, but passionate. Little did we know he would develop into a multi-platinum hip hop star.

But enough about Vanilla Ice: this is about The Stef. He goes by many names. Some may know him as his MC name, “Fire Damage”, so-called because like fire he's overwhelming, noxious and a danger to children.

He is also known as The Stef, that's THE Stef just so (and you may need to help me out here) we don't get him confused with other famous Stefs like...

People call out names, such as Steffi Graf, Stephanie Beecham and Stefan Dennis who played Paul in Neighbours.

I first met The Stef when he used to come into my shop to buy CDs. There was something different about him. Maybe it was his smile, maybe it was his looks, maybe it was the shell suits. Me and my bookshop colleague took him under our wing: we took him to gigs, we helped get him a job with us, we became friends.

Basically, grooming.

We gained a shared love of partying, particularly the totally non-gay time we dressed as cowboys then swapped clothes. And music runs through our veins like White Russians, both of us DJing at a night cafe, The Stef MCing while I beatmixed breaks a youth club where ten year old gangster kids would come down and rap lyrics like “iminimimino imibo dibbedydo” and we'd say, yeah man, that's really deep.

Even now, The Stef keeps it real on his Facebook page by posting videos of DMX, LL Cool J and UB40. That's scrabble scores of 8, 16 and 250 respectively.*

We both have a shared love of going to pubs where football or rugby is being shown. Stef loves watching the game and I love watching The Stef turn an impressive shade of purple as he yells his lungs out. Apparently he supports England. And Poland. His ideal country would be a mixture of the two, but that would be called Pongland, which is stupid.

The Stef can be a passionate man. He is one of the few people that can get into an argument in the street, get punched in the face, and then end up being his attacker's best mate. If we ever fall out, Stef, remind me to reconcile our friendship by punching your face off.

The Stef's ability to shovel buckets of food down his gob and still maintain a martial arts physique is legendary. In fact, I have one of his shopping receipts here.

Pulls out massively long receipt that rolls out across the table and halfway across the floor. Reads:

"Pasta, tuna, crisps, donner meat, chips, pasta, crisps... and a £1.99 ready-meal which is pasta with donner meat sauce and a side serving of tuna-flavoured crisps."

When in the middle of a rather strenuous session of mastication, The Stef cannot talk: instead he chooses to communicate through his eyebrows. An eyebrow frown means he's thinking of going home to do some washing. One raised eyebrow indicates he wants a pint of whatever you're drinking. Both raised eyebrows means he's about to keel over because he's reached his two-pint tolerance level.

The once gave me a keyring.

Holds up racing car keyring. A wheel has fallen off.

It's a racing car, because we both liked formula one. If you look closely, you'll notice the wheel's fallen off. It is now a three-wheeled car, it's essentially a model of a very fast Robin Reliant.

And now, every time I watch an F1 race and a car's wheel falls off, and the driver burns up in a horrendous fire while the tyre bounces into the spectator's arena and violently crushes a hundred people, I think fondly of The Stef and this beautiful symbol of our friendship.

This day is all about The Stef and his bride, but I have to address something I know we're all thinking about. That long love affair, pre-[bride], with the one person that I thought The Stef would be with forever. Of course, I'm talking about MC Serch.*

Let's not forget those intimate nights they spent together, MC Serch blasting out lyrics to The Stef in his bedroom, and The Stef grabbing his hairbrush and shouting them back with delicate affection, sweet, sweet lines like:

"Honeydip, and take the squad to the teepee, Hit it off, smoke a cig, watch a little TV."

"When I go pop pop pop, Simon says "Stop”."

Start to read third lyric, then realise there are children in the room. It was going to be a Vanilla Ice lyric, "ecstasy you don't wanna miss gotta have it! Animal sex with a twist like a rabbit."

Then a load of more personal stuff to end the speech, the only bit of it I want to share being my final visual gag addressed to the bride:

You 'get' Stef. You know his strengths, his weaknesses, his charms and his foibles. Because there's the entertainer Stef, but then there's the deeper Stef that not so many people get to see. In fact, I've taken the liberty of producing a pie chart to show Stef's many sides.

Pulls out hand-drawn A3 pie chart headed 'The Inner Stef' with several different coloured pie pieces, one of which has his bride's name, while all the other bits of pie each contain the word FOOD. Small print at the bottom: Copyright, the Office Of National Steftistics. Some of the family wasn't so sure about this bit... but The Stef seemed to approve.

* blatantly stolen from my Boy Band Family Tree performance from December 2010.
**The Stef's love of 3rd Bass is well documented.

Speech edited and reprinted with approval of the groom.