The Speeches of ... John Philpot Curran. Complete Ed., Ed. by T. Davis

When they give you the Prize they give you some nicely bound books about the years before, and they have all the Thank-You speeches written out as if theyБЂ™re some big deal. So you begin to think itБЂ™s of some importance what you say in this ThankYou speech, because itБЂ™s going to be published. What I didnБЂ™t realize was that hardly anyone was going to listen to it carefully, and nobody was going to read it! I had lost my sense of proportion: I couldnБЂ™t just say thank you very much, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah; it would have been so easy to do that, but no, I have to make it honest. And the truth was, I didnБЂ™t really want this Prize, so how do I say thank you when I donБЂ™t want it? My wife says I was a nervous wreck, worrying about what I was going to say in the speech, but I finally figured out a way to make a perfectly satisfactory-sounding speech that was nevertheless completely honest. IБЂ™m sure those who heard the speech had no idea what this guy had gone through in preparing it. I started out by saying that I had already received my prize in the pleasure I got in discovering what I did, from the fact that others used my work, and so on ...»