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| News · Satire · Spoof · Parody · Humour · Tony Blair |
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| You are passing rapidly through: Home > News | 11th February |
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| Upset at International Oratory Championships in Evian 3 June by Malcolm Drury It was upset all round at the International Oratory Championships, held in Evian, France, over the weekend. Odds-on favourite Prime Minister Tony Blair was thrown out of the competition following accusations of cheating, President "Boy" George W. Bush collapsed into inanity in the freestyle programme, following his early lead in the long programme, and the low-ranked German competitor, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, unexpectedly took first place. Douglas Ramsbottom, Britain's representative on the International Oratory Committee, told our man next to the fresh water spring: "The long programme has a number of required technical elements, such as platitudes, innuendo, homilies, and hyperbole. Competitors may have their speech in front of them and the judges look for ease and grace of delivery as well as technical merit. In the freestyle programme competitors are not allowed to have written material in front of them, and judging is based more on style than on the technical side. However, all the material must be new." In the long programme Mr. Bush took an early lead with a smooth and impressive performance, the highlight of which was a triple platitude followed immediately by a double homily. Tony Blair was a close second, and would have taken the lead but for a stumble on a particularly difficult quadruple hyperbole, which his coach, Clare Short, had advised him not to attempt. "That's the trouble. He never listens to advice," she later told our reporter. But it was in the freestyle programme that things began to go badly wrong for both world leaders. Mr. Bush, dressed in a body-hugging spandex suit, which, according to one of his aides had been "er, enhanced, if you take my meaning," and wearing an American flag as a cape, quickly degenerated into a stream of disconnected and meaningless phrases, and his coach, US Secretary of Offence Donald Rumsfeld, pulled him out of the competition early, saying unfortunately they had to leave as they had a plane to catch. Tony Blair, now in first place, seemed sure of victory, speaking well until he began to talk about "new" proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the astute German judge recognised it as coming from a Readers' Digest of 2001. This resulted in automatic disqualification, leaving the door open for Gerhard Schroeder, with a discourse on the life of Goethe, to take first place, following a long programme performance that had been judged technically sound but stylistically stodgy and rather unimaginative. Although not part of the competition, the opportunity was taken to award the Prince Philip Challenge Cup for Diplomacy, which went to Mr. Rumsfeld for his "old Europe" comments. Once again the Margaret Thatcher Golden Handbag for Hectoring went unawarded, as no-one could come close to the hectoring ability of the lady herself.
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