Christmas Special: How to write a political speech
Politics Unpacked
Anna Covell
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2017
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this special episode recorded in front of an audience, Matt Chorley sits down with former No10 speechwriter and Times columnist, Philip Collins to discuss the art of writing the perfect political speech.
Using examples from famous speeches Philip explains how Churchill showed timing is everything, why you must have something of importance to say and why it's best try to include a joke, unless the person telling it is John Prescott.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just imagine what your best Christmas ever would sound like. |
| 0:03.4 | Thank you for calling National Lottery. I can see you calling about a winner today, is that correct? |
| 0:07.4 | Yeah, I think I have. I'd just take to double check before I do a cartwheel. |
| 0:11.1 | Yeah, I can confirm that you have won the top prize 1.2 million oh my |
| 0:15.5 | what happy Christmas why do now you have the best Christmas ever this, it could be you. |
| 0:24.0 | The National Lottery. |
| 0:26.0 | Rules and procedures apply. |
| 0:28.0 | Players must be 18 or over. Hello and welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast on The Times, I'm Matt Chorley. |
| 0:44.0 | This is a special episode in the podcast in which I speak to Phil Collins, Times |
| 0:47.9 | Colonist and former speech writer to Tony Blair about how to write a political |
| 0:52.0 | speech. It is recorded live at a special times plus event in front of readers of the newspaper, |
| 0:57.0 | and we began by talking about some of the pitfalls of writing a speech for someone else. |
| 1:04.6 | I used to get called in to go and help out other members of the cabinet and there's one |
| 1:08.6 | back in the blair years was a deputy prime minister. |
| 1:10.5 | I won't identify other than to call him John. |
| 1:15.1 | And this John had a tendency to ramble, and we had a total disaster with him laying aside |
| 1:19.8 | his script, and off he went into some verbal world of his own devising. |
| 1:26.0 | And you can imagine how awful it was. |
| 1:27.8 | Nobody knew what the subject was, never mind |
| 1:30.2 | what he talked about. |
| 1:31.7 | So after that, I said to him, |
| 1:33.4 | at the behest of the Prime Minister, |
... |
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