Toasts for All Occasions - book review

Toasts for All Occasions

When you’re asked to say a few words or make a festive toast to crown the evening, does your heart start a rumba or do you look to a B-movie plot twist, such as visitors from outer space, to divert attention from you?

A few well-chosen words can make a lovely occasion more memorable and those in the spotlight giving those words can appear charming, witty and erudite or stumbling and nervous. Or in the case of Hugh Grant, all of the above.

As the best man in a wedding in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” he makes the following toast:

I am sorry to drag you from your delicious dessert but there are one or two little things I feel I should say as best man. This is only the second time I’ve been a best man. I hope I did the job all right. At least the couple in question are still talking to me. They are not actually talking to each other. The divorce came through a couple of months ago. But I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with me. Apparently Paula knew that Peter had slept with her younger sister before I mentioned it in my speech. The fact that he slept with her mother came as a surprise. But I think it was incidental to the nightmare of recrimination and violence that became their two-day marriage.

But my job today is to talk about Angus and there are no skeletons in his cupboard.

I am ever in bewildered awe of anyone who makes this kind of commitment that (they) have made today. I know I couldn’t do it.

This is one of the toasts in the “Famous Cinema Toasts” in Jeff and Deborah Herman’s book, Toast for All Occasions from Career Press. This book is a convenient guide to prepare you for those moments when aliens from space won’t bail you out and you don’t have a screenwriter at your beck and call to write a toast for you. Although, I believe it might take Hugh Grant’s perfect comic timing to pull off the above speech and it shouldn’t be tried at home.

Jeff Herman is the founder of The Jeff Herman Literary Agency and Deborah Herman is an author and ghostwriter and literary agent. To learn more about Jeff Herman, read this interview with Jeff Herman at the Writers Write web site.

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