On 17 August 1998 Bill Clinton delivered this address to the nation, that for many came to define the second term of his presidency. Clinton was and is electrifying speaker, his feats with a microphone are legendary, but this is a different kind of speech — the speech of the wrongdoer, the apologiser, the under siege, the repentant.

My own view is that it’s a good mea culpa speech, although speaking well is almost counterproductive when the public perception is one of being too slick, or slippery, or untrustworthy, or abusive.

In terms of choosing the right words, Clinton accepts responsibility, (although some might argue that he fudges with ‘my answers were legally accurate’. Ate least he doesn’t shape shift with the most famous few lines:

Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.

It’s not a happy anniversary. Clinton was a hero for many, including me, and it’s impossible to know the Lewinsky story and not feel duped, or disgusted, or just plain sad. The podcast that really clinched it for me was Slate’s Slow Burn Series 2 which is one of the best series ever made.

I’ll copy the transcript below.

A note on the Speakola podcast

My apologies, particularly to paid subscribers, for a lack of output on Speakola podcast. I have a great episode recorded which I will edit this week, with the colourful and witty former UK HighCourt judge (Family Division) Sir Nicholas Moysten. His feature speech for the episode is the beauty he recorded on retirement from the bench as a result of his Parkinsons, and he’s now part of the brilliant Movers and Shakers podcast which discusses all matters relating to Parkinsons.

Do Meet Your Heroes

On the subject of disability adjacent podcasts, my son Jack is fifteen and has cerebral palsy. He’s starting a podcast (with me guiding) called ‘Do Meet Your Heroes’, in which he chats to sports stars, musicians, comedians, and others who make his list of heroes. Episode one is out. He also gives me shit here for not doing enough episodes of Speakola!

But the full first episode is really cute. You should give it a listen and a subscribe!

I promise to start chasing more Speakola guests now! I’ve been overwhelmed, and a little broadsided, by the many solo years I’ve had on this Speakola project. It’s difficult to chase guests, to find times for records, to do the edits, to publish, when it’s not really a financially viable proposition. I will, however, get back to it, because it’s a great podcast and I enjoy the end result.

What about the nerves in the seconds before he starts here! Amazing.

Bill Clinton: - “Indeed I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate”, Address to nation - 1998

17 August 1998, Washington DC, USA

Good evening.

This afternoon in this room, from this chair, I testified before the Office of Independent Counsel and the grand jury.

I answered their questions truthfully, including questions about my private life, questions no American citizen would ever want to answer.

Still, I must take complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private. And that is why I am speaking to you tonight.

As you know, in a deposition in January, I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information.

Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.

But I told the grand jury today and I say to you now that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action.

I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.

I can only tell you I was motivated by many factors. First, by a desire to protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct.

I was also very concerned about protecting my family. The fact that these questions were being asked in a politically inspired lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, was a consideration, too.

In addition, I had real and serious concerns about an independent counsel investigation that began with private business dealings 20 years ago - dealings, I might add, about which an independent federal agency found no evidence of any wrongdoing by me or my wife over two years ago.

The independent counsel investigation moved on to my staff and friends, then into my private life. And now the investigation itself is under investigation.

This has gone on too long, cost too much and hurt too many innocent people.

Now, this matter is between me, the two people I love most - my wife and our daughter - and our God. I must put it right, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to do so.

Nothing is more important to me personally. But it is private, and I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It’s nobody’s business but ours.

Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.

Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long, and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this. That is all I can do.

Now it is time - in fact, it is past time - to move on.

We have important work to do - real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face.

And so tonight, I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.

Thank you for watching. And good night.

The Elephant in the Room

If you’d like to help Speakola, but don’t like memberships because of recurring payments, you could either make a straight donation or put your name down for two copies of my new hardback picture book, which will be out at Christmas. It’s a beauty, with the world’s biggest idiom stomping its way into a family’s hectic life and another hidden idiom drawn into each illustration. If you register for two hardback copies by the end of this week I’ll add your kids (or grandkids’) names to a list on the back page! They’ll love seeing their names in print in their new favourite book!

Laura and I won CBCA Honour Book for The Cow Tripped Over the Moon and Hickory Dickory Dash was National Simultaneous Storytime title 2017. Get two for the present drawer! (pay when the books come in)

Names list closes Friday

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Here is a clip of Jack bagging me for not doing enough episodes of Speakola recently.

Here is his series welcome.

Jack’s heroes are located mainly in the worlds of comedy, music, sport, media and family life. His first episode is an interview with footy content creator Caden Macdonald, who has made skits, parody songs, matchday vlogs, goal recreations and really every type of AFL video for his YouTube channel and instagram. Jack has been an avid fan ever since he was tiny. Caden wasn’t just available to be Jack’s inaugural guest, he’s also met with Jack before other Melbourne-Hawthorn games, and just been generally lovely to him.

After Caden told Jack in this interview that he aspired to be an AFL commentator, Jack told us he wanted to be a commentator too. ‘I want to do the Kid’s Call’, Jack said, which is a special channel 7 release a couple of times a year with underage commentators covering the action. ‘Won’t commentary be hard for you?’ I said, trying to keep things realistic. ‘Because you can’t see the game, really, can you?’ Jack has cortical vision impairment and very low vision, and relies on radio or our descriptions to follow the play. ‘Oh yeah' he said, deflated. I tried to bolster him by saying that boundary riders could be in a wheelchair, and that he could aim for ‘ground conditions and weather and that stuff’. He was quiet for a while, and then said something that really did break my heart. ‘Dad, I don’t want to have CP any more.’

Ten years ago, when she was Jack’s age, Ballarat teenager Maddie Fogarty delivered a speech at the Royal South Street Speech & Drama Society that made me cry, for similar reasons. It was something of a viral sensation at the time, and involved Maddie directly addressing her disability, as though addressing a person, and telling it exactly what she thought:

We have known each other since I came out of the womb. You have always been there, not a foot step behind me. As a young child I never quite understood what you were, let alone how much you would affect and impact my life. Now I’m an adolescent I can comprehend that you will never be gone and that I will never be able to escape your presence. I can now apprehend that you will always be suffocating me, you will always be intoxicating me with your disease.

It’s such a beautiful piece of writing and you should visit the whole speech below. A few years later, Maddie also won the Heywire regional storytelling competition at the ABC, with this piece of writing.

Maddie of course is not speaking for Jack, as much as I’m tempted to pair her emotions to his. In his podcast, Jack is speaking for Jack, and he’s often hilarious. Here is his promotion for my new picture book, The Elephant in the Room, followed by some expert show promotion by Jack. He really does love a microphone.

If you are interested in having yours or your kids name in The Elephant in the Room, fill out this form by August 20th (when it goes to print). There is a hidden idiom drawn into every illustration, as well as a surprise pregnancy (a la Dallas or Home & Away!) If you want my banking PIN, as promised by Jack in the above clip, get in touch via the usual channels. 😀

If you enjoy our first episode, pass it on, either by sharing this page or the podcast link. Liking this post will also give Do Meet Your Heroes a push along. And please read Maddie Fogarty’s ‘Dear Cerebral Palsy’ below. It’s one of the best disability themed speeches on Speakola.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson

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Maddison Fogarty: ‘Dear cerebral palsy’, Royal South Street Society Speech & Drama competition - 2016

11 August 2016, Ballarat, Victoria

In this speech, 14-year old Maddie, of Ballarat, won first place in Ballarat’s Royal South Street Society drama and speech competition with her piece, Dear Cerebral Palsy. It was first published by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute web page for Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day and republished with permission on Speakola.

Dear Cerebral Palsy,

Isn’t it amazing how one’s life can be so perfect, even if it is for just a moment, even if it is stricken with fantasies and dishonesty, whether that untruthfulness lies in the form of a gorgeous imaginary boyfriend or a well-functioning, able body? Then I remember you, my worst enemy, who runs through my veins and clouds my mind. Then I remember all the rubbish that you’ve put me through, all the rubbish no young girl should even have to think about let alone experience.

We have known each other since I came out of the womb. You have always been there, not a foot step behind me. As a young child I never quite understood what you were, let alone how much you would affect and impact my life. Now I’m an adolescent I can comprehend that you will never be gone and that I will never be able to escape your presence. I can now apprehend that you will always be suffocating me, you will always be intoxicating me with your disease.

You are always on my mind, I can never stop thinking about you. The nights are often the hardest. I lay awake drowning myself in my tears. I imagine the miserable future ahead of me. I listen to you tell me that boys will not love me, that I have no place on this earth, that I would be better off dead. I think back to the countless times I have named myself the sad girl, the mistake, the girl with nothing for her. I think back to all those times you have insulted me, isolated me, constricted me.

I think about all those times you would try to introduce me to depression, try to intertwine us as one, urging me to find the highest ledge or the sharpest blade.

I replay all the cruel things you say to me, informing me with such a despised and disgusted manner, that I am useless, worthless, a waste of space, unlovable.

My life has been bombed with oceans of obstacles, skies of despair and millions of questions at the hands of your mission to make my life a living hell. My life has consisted of your taunts, your orders and your ugliness.

But you, cerebral palsy, you will not defeat me, you will not rule and ridicule my life. I will take your presence as a gift because I know that you are a part of me for a reason. I will take your presence as a gift because you are what has shaped me into the bright, bubbly, determined, caring, compassionate girl I am today. You will not destroy me, you will empower me to be the best person I possibly can be.

Sincerely,

Maddison

Race Around the World Reflections

Good one, Wilson is my personal newsletter, about family, disability parenting, sport, general observations, and most recently, the TV show Race Around the World, which finished this week. I was a previous winner of that show 27 years ago.

Good one, Wilson!

Race reflections — RATW finale

After missing a few episodes while at the World Cup, and then binging to catch up, I’m now hanging on weekly episodes as they play each Sunday night. I’ve enjoyed this third series so much. It isn’t just nostalgia for the hundred days that changed my life, a hundred day stretch that was so other worldly, so adrenaline packed, so stressful, so exhausting…

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11 days ago · 11 likes · 12 comments · Tony Wilson

I had a moment of adverse serendipity this week. I’d just added Glen Hansard’s beautiful and joyful Best Song Oscars acceptance speech from 2008 to Speakola library, and just one day later the terrible news of his death broke. Hansard was the lead singer of Irish band The Frames, and he won international fame as the co-creator of the hit musical Once, and won a Best Original Song Academy Award for ‘Falling Slowly’ (shared with co writer Marketa Irglova).

Hansard’s acceptance speech for that Oscar was terrific - rapid fire, excited, and with all those lovely lyrical Irish ts. ‘Make art! Make art!’ is it’s enduring message.

Listen to that beautiful song, an absolute tearjerker at the best of times, and revisit Hansard’s speech.

I’ll post the Oscars speech transcript below.

Best wishes

Tony Wilson
Speakola curator and host

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Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova: ‘Make art! Make art’, Oscar for Best Original Song - 2008

24 February 2008, Kodak Theatre, Los Angeles, USA

Thanks! Go raibh míle, míle, maith agat. This is amazing. What are we doing here? This is mad. We made this film two years ago. We shot it on two Handycams. It took us three weeks to make. We made it for a hundred grand. We never thought we’d ever come into a room like this and be in front of you people. It’s been an amazing thing. And thanks for taking this film seriously, all of you. It means a lot to us. Thanks to the Academy. Thanks to all the people who’ve helped us. They know who they are, we don’t need to say them. This is amazing. Make art. Make art. Thanks.

World cup adventures

Speakola newsletters have been a little scarce on the ground while I was away in Canada and USA for World Cup 2026. If you want to read any of my posts from that tournament, visit Good one, Wilson!

Good one, Wilson!

Cup Fever dream

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a month ago · 5 likes · Tony Wilson

Speakola is also encouraging people to follow and Nerd News. Great newsletter. Today’s post is about ‘Bongs before bedtime’. There is also a brain buster puzzle each Friday (tomorrow).

NerdNews

Bongs before Bedtime.

Are you one of the one in six Aussies who reaches for a quick hit of the sticky icky icky before drifting off to sleep? Does it help? What if the calmness it gave switched off your ability to dream? Should that matter? Should you care…

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19 days ago · 42 likes · Adam Spencer

I’m in a World Cup state of mind, enjoying the thrills of following my beloved Socceroos to Vaancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and now Dallas. We play Egypt on Friday (US time) and it should be a great match up. The teams are only separated by two places in the world rankings, and its very winnable. If Australia does pull through, it will be our first ever win in the knockout stage of the World Cup.

Today I was in am English pub in Fort Worth with the proprietor and four other people and watched a truly great footballer inflict pain on the DR Congo. Harry Kane’s winner for England was a preposterous strike, I couldn’t believe he found the power and placement from that body position, and the Central Africans who’d led so valiantly fell short of a world cup miracle.

As a speeches site, I love one human interest story that came out of the DR Congo campaign. In attendance today was a Congolese fan, Michel Kuka Mboladinga, better known as Lumumba Vea who takes on the role of ‘living statue’. Patrice Lumumba was the great independence hero of the Congo, and one of the greatest figures in the decolonisation movements of the 1850s and 60s. He was assassinated less than seven months after taking office, with the USA and Belgium both being active participants in the plot to eliminate him. Eventually it was Belgian agents who pulled the trigger.

Lumumba is still revered in DR Congo, and Lumumba Vea is a talismanic figure in the stands as he stands in an almost photographic pose in full Lamumba presidential regalia. It must hurt a lot to be so still in that position.

We lose DR Congo and Lumumba Vea from the World Cup today, but Speakola salutes this Patrice Lumumba speech from the Congress for the Freedom of Culture in 1959.

Enjoy, and GO SOCCEROOS FOR FRIDAY!

Here is audio from our travels on World Cup Road Trip podcast with Cam Fink, a reprise of the project I did with Francis Leach in 2018.

Listen to our Road Trip podcast

Tony Wilson, Speakola.

Here is some of my personal blog writing about the World Cup.

Good one, Wilson!

Goalless in Seattle

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2 months ago · 7 likes · 5 comments · Tony Wilson

Patrice Lumumba: ‘Africans, let us rise up!’, Congress for the Freedom of Culture - 1959

22 March 1959, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

I thank the Congress for Freedom and Culture and the University of Ibadan for the kind invitation they extended me to attend this international conference, where the fate of our beloved Africa being discussed ….

The common goal is the liberation of Africa from the colonialist yoke. Since our objectives are the same, we will attain them more easily and more rapidly through union than through division. These divisions, which the colonial powers have always exploited the better to dominate us, have played an important role — and are still playing that role — in the suicide of Africa.

How can we extricate ourselves from this impasse? In my view, there is only one way: bringing all Africans together in popular movements or unified parties. All tendencies can coexist within these parties bringing all nationals together, and each will have its say, both in the discussion of problems facing the country and in the conduct of public affairs.

A genuine democracy will be at work within these parties and each will have the satisfaction of expressing its opinions freely. The more closely united we are, the better we will resist oppression, corruption, and those divisive maneuvers which experts in the policy of “divide and rule” are resorting to.

This wish to have unified parties or movements in our young country must not be interpreted as a tendency toward political monopoly or a certain brand of dictatorship. We ourselves are against despotism and dictatorship. I wish to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that it is the height of wisdom to thwart from the very outset any possible maneuvers on the part of those who would like to profit from our apparent political rivals in order to set us against each other and thus delay our freeing ourselves from the colonialist regime.

Experience proves that in our African territories the opposition that certain people create in the name of democracy is often not inspired by a concern for the common welfare; a thirst for glory and the furthering of personal interests are the principal if not the only, motives for this.It is only when we have won the independence of our countries and when our democratic institutions are stabilized that the existence of a pluralist political system will be justified. The existence of an intelligent, dynamic and constructive opposition is indispensable in order to counterbalance the political and administrative action of the government in power. But this moment does not appear to have arrived yet, and dividing our efforts today would he to render our country a disservice.

All our compatriots must be persuaded that they will not serve the general interest of the country if they are divided or if they foster such divisions, any more than they would serve it by balkanizing our country and partitioning it into weak little states. Once the territory was balkanized, it would be difficult to achieve national unity again. Calling for African unity arid then destroying its very foundations is hardly proof of a genuine desire for such unity. In the struggle that we are peacefully waging today to win our independence, we do not intend to drive Europeans out of this continent or seize their possessions or persecute them.

We are not pirates. On the contrary, we respect individuals and the rights of others to well-being. The one thing we are determined to do — and we would like others to understand us is to root out colonialism and imperialism from Africa. We have long suffered and today we want to breathe the air of freedom. The Creator has given us this share of the earth that goes by the name of the African continent; it belongs to us and we are its only masters.It is our right to make this continent a continent of justice, law, and peace.

All of Africa is irrevocably engaged in a merciless struggle against colonialism and imperialism. We wish to bid farewell to the rule of slavery and bastardization that has so severely wronged us. Any people that oppresses another people is neither civilized nor Christian.

The West must free Africa as soon as possible. The West must examine its conscience today and recognize the right of each colonized territory to freedom and dignity. If the colonialist governments promptly understand our aspirations, we will negotiate with them, but if they stubbornly insist on considering Africa their possession, we will be obliged to consider the colonizers the enemies of our emancipation. Under these circumstances, we will regretfully cease to be friends with them.

I hereby publicly take it upon myself to thank all those Europeans who have spared no effort to help our peoples improve their lot. All humanity will be grateful to them for the magnificent mission of humanization and emancipation they are carrying out in certain parts of Africa. We do not want to cut ourselves off from the West, for we are quite aware that no people in the world can be self-sufficient.

We are altogether in favor of friendship between races, but the West must respond to our appeal. Westerners must understand that friendship is not possible when the relationship between us is one of subjugation and subordination. The disturbances that are occurring at present in certain African territories will continue to occur if the administrative powers do not put an end to the colonial regime.

This is the only possible path to genuine peace and friendship between African and European peoples. We have an imperative need for financial, technical, and scientific aid from the West aimed at rapid economic development and the stabilization of our societies. But the capital our countries need must be invested in the form of mutual aid between nations. National governments will give this foreign capital every sort of guarantee it wishes. The Western technicians to whom we make an urgent appeal will come to Africa not to dominate us but to serve and aid our countries.

Europeans must recognize and come to accept the idea that the liberation movement that we are engaged in throughout Africa is not directed against them, nor against their possessions nor against their persons, but purely and simply against the regime of exploitation and enslavement that we are no longer willing to tolerate.

If the agree to put an immediate end to this regime instituted by their predecessors we will live in friendship and brotherhood with them. A twofold effort must be made to hasten the industrialization of our various regions and the economic development of the country.

To this end, we address an appeal to friendly countries to send us an abundance of capital and many technicians. The lot of black workers must be appreciably improved. The wages they earn at present are clearly insufficient. The dire poverty of the working classes is the source of many of the social conflicts that exist at present in our countries. Labor unions have a great role to play in this regard, the role of protectors and educators.

It is not enough merely to demand a raise in wages; there is also a great need to educate workers in order that they may become conscious of their professional, civic, and social obligations, and also acquire a clear conception of their rights. On the cultural plane, the new African states must make a serious effort to further African culture. We have a culture all our own, unparalleled moral and artistic values, an art of living and patterns of life that are ours alone. All these African splendors must be jealously preserved and developed.

‘We will borrow from Western civilization what is good and beautiful and reject what is not suitable for us. This amalgam of African and European civilization will give Africa a civilization of a new type, an authentic civilization corresponding to African realities. Efforts must also be made to free our peoples psychologically. A certain conformism is noticeable on the part of many intellectuals, and its origins are well known. This conformism stems from the moral pressures and the reprisals to which black intellectuals have often been subjected. The minute they have told the truth, they have been called dangerous revolutionaries, xenophobes, provocateurs, elements that must he closely watched, and so on.

These moves to intimidate us and corrupt our morals must cease. We need genuine literature and a free press that brings the opinion of the people to light, rather than more propaganda leaflets and a muzzled press. I hope that the Congress for Freedom and Culture will aid us along these lines.

We hold out a fraternal hand to the West. Let it today give proof of the principle of equality and friendship between races that its sons have always taught us as we sat at our desks in school, a principle written in capital letters in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Africans must be just as free as other citizens of the human family to enjoy the fundamental liberties set forth in this declaration and the rights proclaimed in the United Nations Charter. The period of racial monopolies is now at an end. African solidarity must take concrete form in facts and acts.

We must form a bloc in order to demonstrate our brotherhood to the world. In order to do so, I suggest that governments that have already won their independence give every possible aid and support to countries that are not yet independent. In order to further cultural exchanges and the rapprochement of French-speaking and English-speaking countries, the teaching of both French and English should be made compulsory in all African schools. A knowledge of both these languages will put an end to the difficulties of communication that French-speaking and English- speaking Africans encounter when they meet.

This is an important factor for their interaction. Territorial barriers must also be done away with so that Africans may travel freely between the various African states. Scholarships should also be set up for students in the dependent territories. I want to take advantage of the opportunity here offered me to pay honor publicly to Dr. Kwame N’Krumah and Mr. Sekou Touré for having succeeded in liberating our brothers in Ghana and Guinea.

Africa will not be truly free and independent as long as any part of this continent remains under foreign domination.

I conclude my remarks with this passionate appeal: Africans, let us rise up! Africans, let us unite! Africans, let us walk hand in hand with those who want to help us make this beautiful continent a continent of freedom and justice!

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Have you got a favourite football speech? I love the real ones from coaches, retiring players, commentators. is there a great football eulogy? Let me know in the comments.

Go Socceroos!

Our film ‘Ange & The Boss’ about Ferenc Puskas time coaching in Australia is up on SBS On Demand and is a great World Cup watch. (Puskas scored in the 1954 final)

Smithy (James Cordon): ‘And Becks you are not exempt from this’, Comic Relief spray - 2009

Can we help you, mate? (Mumbling)
Actually, since you asked, erm, you could reimburse my plane ticket I bought to Austria three years ago under the assumption that you might qualify for the euros! JT, to them. Me, budgie, dirt box, Chinese Alan Dino and Dino’s brother all booked that ticket to Austria three years ago because it was inconceivable to us that England wouldn’t qualify for the European Championships! That means without the beer festival the whole thing would have been a waste of time! And yet I still believe in you. I believe in every single one of you.

Crouchy. When I look at you everything tells me you should be rubbish at football and yet you’re brilliant. And you know why? Because of this: The Robot! Yeah? Where’s it gone? You were hitting them right, left, center, all over the park when that was there! I know what’s happened. You’ve started to fear the robot. You’ve got to let the robot fear you.I’m talking like staple, tray service swivel, can, open, drinkity drink drink yeah? What about some of these? A few turns in there? If you score a hat-trick, pull out the rope, pull out the rope.

David James. You’re England’s number one. You are the best you’ve ever been and you know why? Cos you’ve stopped dicking around with your hair! We’ve had it white, red, ‘fro, corn rows okay? Let’s just.. In fact, this goes for the whole team, okay? From now on, we either shave it off or it’s a short back and sides, okay?

And Becks, you are not exempt from this.

Ashley. You know what, you’re my favourite left back. In the world. And it hurts me to say that, cos I hate Chelsea. Just one question: What the hell’s your missus doing halfway up Mt Kilimanjaro with Gary Barlow and Chris Moyles? She is a footballer’s wife, I’m talking breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry. If she starts behaving like a proper footballer’s wife you will vast improvements on the pitch.

Frank. Frankie. Actually... do you know, um... Oh, do you know, err, do you know Steven Gerrard? Big scouse guy, yeah, he’s got that unfortunate forward hairline? Yeah, always talk like that: (accented mumbling) Yeah, you know him? Yeah, who I’m talking about? You like him? You get on with him? Play like it then! Maybe look up and pass to him every now and then! Okay? ‘Cos you are really good at football, okay? And he is as good if not a teensy bit better. I got time for you Frank.

You know that. Shaun. What I what I think we need to work on is raising the profile, you know what I mean? I’m talking clothing line, sports shoe, soft-drink, yeah? Chinese Alan’s brother in law has actually got Danielle Lloyd’s phone number. So, pass that to you, you two (implications) Raise the profile, yeah?

Becks, I know you’re cool, gimme five. You and me, we’re Essex boys and proud, you know? You went to the same school as my little sister, so practically related. It’s cool, we’ll text it or go down the pub, whatever you like, yeah? You’re a beautiful man. With a beautiful face. JT. You are the last bastion of the old fashioned English center back. You’re like Terry Butcher with a bandage round your head. Until you miss a penalty! (mocking crying) Right? I’ve had enough of this. We save the tears for home.

And that goes for all of us. Football’s not about individuals... Football’s not about solo efforts, it’s about a team. And you know how we make a team work, right? How? I’m glad you asked. I’m glad you asked. David Beckham. You’ve got to hold. And give. And do it at the right time. You can be slow or fast but you must get to the line. They might hit you, they might hurt you, defend, attack, there’s only one way to beat them, And that’s around the back. So stop you if you can ‘cos you’re the England man! And what you’re looking at is the master plan. We’re no hooligans, this ain’t a football song, three lions on our chests, you know we can’t go wrong, we’re singing for England, you’re playing for England!

Come on! Come on Crouchy, yeah! Becks, come on! Yes, JT! (shouting) Cheers mate, amazing. Amazing. Thank you for- shhhh You. You talk on the pitch. Now get out of my sight!

If you want to read my 2006 fan memoir, Australia United, it’s up on Amazon.

My personal newsletter, Good one Wilson!

Good one, Wilson!

The Race begins

I felt stricken for the racers, remembering the noose of those 10-day deadlines, that sense that the story you’re chasing isn’t good enough, the logistical horrors, the sleeplessness, the leaden fear every mistake would be seen by everyone you knew and hundreds of thousands you didn’t; and last night the racers had to square up to the judges, cop the cr…

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2 months ago · 4 likes · Tony Wilson

I’ve pointed to General Eisenhower’s D-Day Order before, which I think is beautifully written:

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

One that is equally well known, and has a movie like quality (if only for the fact that well known audio version is actually from a movie!) is General George Patton’s Speech to the Third Army. It’s full of bravado and expletives, and is inspiring and funny and fluent and, in places, gruesome. I read it and imagine that a lot of pre-battle speeches have possessed this sort of machismo over the centuries but from all reports, Patton was an unbelievable orator, and the words in the reported transcript are enduring for a reason. They weren’t aimed at D-Day combatants. We also can’t be exactly sure that the speech was delivered as below, because Patton spent April-May 1944 touring different units and the speech was in fact 4-6 motivational speeches. The YouTube video below contains George C. Scott’s audio from the Oscar winning movie of the early 70s (Best Picture, Scott also won for Best Actor) which has been stripped of a lot of the swearing. The transcript is a better indication, constructed from notes and troop reports. Patton’s most famous line from the series of speeches apparently occurred on 31st May 1944 while addressing the 6th Armored Division:

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

There’s been a lot of misplaced American triumphalism over the last two months. On the day before D-Day, I thought it was worth thinking of these speeches, the men who gave them, the soldiers who fought, the thousands who died, and the gift of freedom that US troops, and other Allied forces, gave to Europe and the world.

Best wishes

Tony

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General Patton: ‘I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging sonofabitch Hitler’ Speech to Third Army - 1944

April-May 1944, delivered 4-6 time to 3rd Army, pre Normanby invasion, United Kingdom

Now I want you to remember, that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country

Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he’s not, he’s a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he’s scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call ‘this chicken-shit drilling.’ That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit. There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job—but they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.

An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. And we have the best team—we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we’re going up against.

All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn’t like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don’t say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.

Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we’ll have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, sir.’ ‘Isn’t it a little unhealthy up there right now?’ I asked. ‘Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No sir, but you sure as hell do.’ Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.

And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Gabès. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old American guts. These were not combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.

Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can’t win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Japs. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. So keep moving. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don’t dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.

Some of you men are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you’ll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it’s not dirt, it’s the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you’ll know what to do.

I don’t want any messages saying ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding a goddamned thing. We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding anything except the enemy’s balls. We’re going to hold him by his balls and we’re going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We’re going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.

There will be some complaints that we’re pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. My men don’t surrender. I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That’s not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another German. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That’s a man for you!

Don’t forget, you don’t know I’m here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this army. I’m not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl ‘Ach! It’s the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!’

Then there’s one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, ‘What did you do in the great World War Two?’ You won’t have to cough and say, ‘Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say ‘Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named George Patton!’

All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I’ll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That’s all.

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An unrelated, non speechy note from Tony

I have a picture book coming out called The Elephant in the Room.

If you commit to buying two or more copies of Laura Wood’s and my new picture book ‘The Elephant in the Room’ I’ll add your name (or your child or grandchild’s) to a thank you page.

Register your name

If you’re a bookshop, I’ll salute you if you commit to four or more copies on consignment at normal trade terms. The book will likely retail at approximately $30. Laura and I want to have it out in 2026! Final illustrations are complete. We are up to book designing and printing. It’s going to be a beautiful hardback.

It’s called ‘The Elephant in the Room’ and it’s about an elephant being ignored in each room of the house, until she isn’t!

It’s also about idioms, and there is an idiom drawn into each illustration for readers to try and spot.

Younger kids will love the story (2-6 years). Older kids will enjoy finding the idioms. My daughter Alice learned about idioms in Grade 5 when she was 10 years old. I think English teachers and librarians will find it a useful teaching aid.

I love this rhyming text, and I think you will too! Laura and I had previous successes with ‘The Cow Tripped Over the Moon’ and ‘Hickory Dickory Dash’. Each sold more than 50,000 copies and were National Simultaneous Storytime titles. We also did ‘Baa Baa Blue Sheep’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide’ together, all through Scholastic.

I have decided to release this one myself, because I’m tired of the structure of picture book contracts. Authors and Illustrators are lucky to get 5% of RRP, and often get as little as 2% when the title is discounted. We received less than 30c per paperback copy for many of the above mentioned 100,000 sales. This is my attempt at trying something different.

You don’t have to pay now. I’m collecting pre-commitments on the form attached. When the book with your name (or your kids’) printed in it is ready to post, I’ll contact you for payment.

Many thanks!

Tony

Good one, Tony! I'll buy 2!

(The idiom in this picture is ‘put your foot in your mouth’)

If you start watching the video above you might not be able to stop crying. I’m talking mainly to Australians, because we’ve lived former AFL player and coach Neale Daniher’s campaign to fight motor neurone disease since he was diagnosed in 2013.

From the first day he came out of the blocks fighting. He started his Fight MND charity, and advocated relentlessly and brilliantly in the search for a cure. The first Big Freeze game was in 2015, and in the years that have followed Fight MND has raised over A$125 million for MND care and research. The fancy dress slide into an ice pool is now a sporting institution, as are the blue beanies every June. Daniher has been at every one. I can’t imagine how the Big Freeze game will feel on Monday week.

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As a speech lover, I’ve marvelled at Daniher’s ability to hold an audience, even as his physical voice has been taken from him. His words are incredible. He brought the mettle of a footy motivator into the world of medical awareness and fundraising. He coached the country in what the disease was, what his disease was, although he never made it about himself. He gave Australians hope that this thing could be beaten, that the causes would be found in his lifetime. He gave thousands and thousands of people hope that the beast could be beaten. Last year he was Australian of the Year, and he received his award with an unforgettable speech, vocalised by computer:

I hope to leave a legacy that says this: no matter the odds, no matter the diagnosis, we all have the power to choose to fight, to choose our attitude, to choose to smile, and to choose to do something. Because the mark of a person isn’t what they say, it’s what they do.

This one from 2017 is a Speakola favourite. It’s a pre-game address to the Melbourne players, the club he coached for 223 games between 1998 and 2007.

12 June 2017, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia

What drives me, and what drives you, comes from within.

And people like me come and go.

And I can tell you now, in a week’s time, you won’t remember a thing I said.

I can’t remember what I said a year ago, or the year before and neither can you.

But, I hope you remember what I do.

People say to me, and I sort of look at them blankly, they say, ‘why do you do what you do? You got a terminal illness, why don’t you tick off your bucket list, enjoy life, you haven’t got long left. Why do you do this?’ ‘What keeps you resilient? Why do you persevere? Where do you get the resolve from?’

And it all comes back to ... I’m really clear on why.

With ‘Fight MND’, as you see up there, what drives me, is not about me.

That’s not called the ‘Neale Daniher Foundation’.

That’s called ‘Fight MND’.

It’s about others.

The disease will get me, I know, but why I do it is that two or three people will die today, while I’m talking to you. And two or three will die tomorrow. And two or three died yesterday.

And what drives me is ... it’s curable. This is curable.

I can’t accept that like now there’s no treatment or cure.

And that drives me to go - well what can I do?

Mightn’t help me, but what can I do that might make it better for others.

And I think there’s something in that for you guys too. In football, there is an element of self. To get the best out of yourself. There’s an element of that that’s true for everyone. You want to be the best you can be.

And there’s a continuum, if you’re looking at self. Over there is selfish, and over there is selfless, on that line.

And nothing great can get done with selfish people.

Nothing.

So where do you sit on that? To be great together, you have to be over here. Selfless.

And where that sits with you,. you can say whatever you like, but your teammates know, by what you do.

By what you do.

I’m really clear on what drives me. And with that, being resilient, and handling adversity, and having resolve, becomes second nature.

I know I’ll have setbacks, I know I’ll get worse, and people say, why don’t you tick off the bucket list?

Why don’t you go and just do what you want to do. In a sense, be selfish.

That doesn’t give me any meaning or purpose.

That gives me no drive.

What drives me is, how can I help people?

There’s a saying, ‘when it’s all said and done, more is said than done’. And the mark of a person is not what you say, but what you do.

The question I’m going to leave you with is, well what are you going to do? The next time you play, what will you do?

You teammates are not all that interested in what you say, they’re interested in what you’re going to do.

Good luck boys, thank you.

Thank you, Neale Daniher. RIP. The fight goes on.

Tony Wilson
Founder & Curator Speakola

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This is the most viewed article on my personal newsletter, Good one, Wilson. Jump on as a free subscriber there. Writing on sport, parenting, Melbourne life.

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A present from Grandpa

Jack isn’t an easy kid to buy presents for. He has cerebral palsy that affects all four limbs, which means bats, balls, boots and pads are out. He has cortical vision impairment that makes it difficult to see and scan text, so no books or comics. He’s scared of movies, even kids movies, because he has a sensory processing disorder, and movie…

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4 years ago · 22 likes · 32 comments · Tony Wilson

Today is the speechaversary of Chisholm’s1969 classic arguing for the Equal Rights for Women Bill. This was legislation aimed at achieving formal legal equality for women in the United States, and to have that legal equality carved into the Constitution as an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The wording was to be:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

The legislation eventually passed Congress in 1972, but never became a Constitutional amendment because it failed to be ratified by the required number of state legislatures. Congress initially set a deadline of seven years (1979) for ratification, and that was subsequently extended to 1982, but only 35 states came to the party.

Three of the naysayers, Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020) have recently voted to ratify ERA, but there is a dispute over whether the rime restrictions have expired.

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Back to Shirley Chisholm. She was a force of nature, a trailblazer, the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, the first black person to run for a major party’s presidential nomination and the first woman to run for president in the Democratic Party’s primaries. Her voice was utterly unique. It’s almost as if she had a slight speech impediment, it spoke to her Bahamian roots, but she was fluent, fierce and beyond courageous and like Martin Luther King, Barack Obama or the Reverend Jesse Jackson, her voice was utterly compelling. It is possibly familiar to anyone who has heard the David Bridie constructed intro to the Speakola podcast — ‘fraud, sham and hypocrisy … change within the system!’ She’s the best speaker I’d never heard of when I started compiling Speakola.

The Equal Rights for Women speech I’m featuring today doesn’t have audio, but you should listen to her speech announcing her candidacy for president to get an idea of her passion and cadence.

This longer UCLA lecture is absolutely incredible. I haven’t added a transcript to the Speakola page yet, but you can listen to any two minutes of this and be blown away.

Here is a recreation of her Equal Rights for Women speech, delivered 57 years ago today. I’ll add a transcript below.

Here are a few more snipped Shirley Chisholm lines that I compiled when I was making the podcast intro with David — ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune!’

She was so freaking awesome:

Shirley Chisholm died at the age of 80 in 2005. She later said, ‘When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.’1 She says something similar in her Equal Rights for Women speech, featured below:

As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as “for men only.”

Thanks to everyone who subscribes to Speakola. Australian readers and listeners can catch me on ABC local radio at … 3am tomorrow morning! Ha. Might catch the interstate truckers anyway! I’ll try to give Shirley Chisholm a salute then.

Now I’m off to set my alarm.

Cheers

Tony Wilson

Founder & Curator, Speakola.

I’ll be attending the FIFA World Cup in Canada and the USA. If you want to follow my travel /sports watching adventures, subscribe to Good one, Wilson! (personal newsletter)

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'You idiots in your beds!'

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a year ago · 5 likes · Tony Wilson

Shirley Chisholm: ‘The happy little homemaker and the contented “old darkey” on the plantation were both produced by prejudice’, Equal Rights for Women Bill - 1969

21 May 1969, Washington DC, USA

Mr.Speaker, when a young woman graduates from college and starts looking for a job, she is likely to have a frustrating and even demeaning experience ahead of her. If she walks into an office for an interview, the first question she will be asked is, “Do you type?’‘

There is a calculated system of prejudice that lies unspoken behind that question. Why is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and Members of Congress.

The unspoken assumption is that women are different. They do not have executive ability orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional.

It has been observed before, that society for a long time, discriminated against another minority, the blacks, on the same basis - that they were different and inferior. The happy little homemaker and the contented “old darkey” on the plantation were both produced by prejudice.

As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as “for men only.”

More than half of the population of the United States is female. But women occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions. They have not even reached the level of tokenism yet No women sit on the AFL-CIO council or Supreme Court There have been only two women who have held Cabinet rank, and at present there are none. Only two women now hold ambassadorial rank in the diplomatic corps. In Congress, we are down to one Senator and 10 Representatives.

Considering that there are about 3 1/2 million more women in the United States than men, this situation is outrageous.

It is true that part of the problem has been that women have not been aggressive in demanding their rights. This was also true of the black population for many years. They submitted to oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have done the same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation particularly among the younger segment of the population.

As in the field of equal rights for blacks, Spanish-Americans, the Indians, and other groups, laws will not change such deep-seated problems overnight But they can be used to provide protection for those who are most abused, and to begin the process of evolutionary change by compelling the insensitive majority to reexamine it’s unconscious attitudes.

It is for this reason that I wish to introduce today a proposal that has been before every Congress for the last 40 years and that sooner or later must become part of the basic law of the land -- the equal rights amendment.

Let me note and try to refute two of the commonest arguments that are offered against this amendment. One is that women are already protected under the law and do not need legislation. Existing laws are not adequate to secure equal rights for women. Sufficient proof of this is the concentration of women in lower paying, menial, unrewarding jobs and their incredible scarcity in the upper level jobs. If women are already equal, why is it such an event whenever one happens to be elected to Congress?

It is obvious that discrimination exists. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns, are stigmatized as ‘’odd’‘ and “unfeminine.” The fact is that a woman who aspires to be chairman of the board, or a Member of the House, does so for exactly the same reasons as any man. Basically, these are that she thinks she can do the job and she wants to try.

A second argument often heard against the equal rights amendment is that is would eliminate legislation that many States and the Federal Government have enacted giving special protection to women and that it would throw the marriage and divorce laws into chaos.

As for the marriage laws, they are due for a sweeping reform, and an excellent beginning would be to wipe the existing ones off the books. Regarding special protection for working women, I cannot understand why it should be needed. Women need no protection that men do not need. What we need are laws to protect working people, to guarantee them fair pay, safe working conditions, protection against sickness and layoffs, and provision for dignified, comfortable retirement. Men and women need these things equally. That one sex needs protection more than the other is a male supremacist myth as ridiculous and unworthy of respect as the white supremacist myths that society is trying to cure itself of at this time.

Source: http://gos.sbc.edu/c/chisholm.html

Email eulogy to Tony

I had a dream about her last week. She is in the passenger’s seat of a car, neither ours nor hers, and it’s stopped outside her house in East Melbourne. I do a double take, because she’s not supposed to be there, she’s supposed to be dead. I run to the kerb to help her. She grabs my elbow, and her hand is trembling, and she smiles and pulls herself up, and then gives me a proper hug, and asks why I’m upset. I’m completely overwhelmed, and I tell her that I haven’t seen her for so long, because she’s — and I struggle to get the words out — ‘Mum, you died.’ She doesn’t say anything, but she holds onto me for a long time. Eventually, we finish the hug, and she’s a bit teary, but she doesn’t comment on being dead. ‘Have you been well?’ she asks. I’m in a much worse way, so I don’t small talk, I say, ‘I only get to see you this once, don’t I? After a year I’m not allowed to go back … ‘

I don’t have any explanation for the turn the dream took at this point, except to say that I’m a big fan of the film ‘About Time’ (easily Richard Curtis’ best film, although my 19 year old daughter Polly has words to say about only the men in the family getting to time travel). Anyway, for mine it’s an only-slightly-sexist romcom masterpiece, and it’s possible I’ve seen it too many times, and final trips back to visit dead parents are a thing in that movie, and just maybe I have the tendency to dream derivative Richard Curtis plots when I’m short of ideas myself, but the sudden realisation that this was it, this was the goodbye we never had, the last goodbye we’d ever have — the grief was so overwhelming that the sleep bubble popped and I was awake, back in Northcote in my own bed, back in this new and discombobulating reality of being motherless in the world.

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It’s the only time I’ve dreamed about Mum since she died. It’s also the only time I’ve ever written about a dream and it’s ironic that it features Mum because nobody hated having a dream recounted more than Mum. Admittedly, the main re-teller of dreams in her life was Dad, and for all my father’s wonderful qualities, all we ask is that he read every submission to his dream slush pile carefully before deciding one might be ready for a wider audience.

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That tweet was written many years ago by Steve Hely, one of the great comedy writers. If you haven’t read ‘How I Became a Famous Novellist’, it’s a masterpiece. Hely also wrote episodes of 30 Rock.

I may have been distracted from the serious business of honouring Mum. We ate soft cheese and carrot cake with her sisters Lesley and Robyn this morning. She’s been front of mind all day. It feels both longer and shorter than a year, which isn’t so much about Mum as how I feel about years and time more generally nowadays. She would have hated getting old, losing more of her independence, struggling on with a body that was already letting her down. But she was absolutely still herself, and none of us were ready for a sudden death. I’m sure she wasn’t. Although she’d be more okay about it than her children and grandchildren. She was tough, my Mum.

I love her and miss her, today and every day.

If you missed Mum’s celebration of life last year, it was a memorable afternoon. I put the speeches up here:

My eulogy is reprinted below:

For Margaret Joan Wilson: ‘The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum’, Celebration of Life, by Tony Wilson

8 May 2025, Leonda, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’ve wondered where I might be when the terrible day arrived. I would never have guessed 16000 kilometres away in an Airbnb in Budapest, barely awake but already trying to share a Dave Barry article about his prostate on the family group chat. It was Dad who called, dialing my phone number that has and always will end with Mum’s birthday 10.06.45, and I could tell by the tremor in his breathing that this was it. This was the day. I was cold all over before he started speaking: ‘Tony, I’m so sorry I have to tell you this but your mother, your beautiful mum who we’ve all loved so much, died today.’

Two hours later, Polly and I were in the square in front of St Stephens when the bells started ringing. We stepped into the middle of the square, and the bells just rang and rang and rang. We stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing up at this glorious cathedral, and the deafening cacophony didn’t let up. On and on it went. People began to assemble on the church steps, hundreds of people, but Polly and I didn’t move, squinting into the sun and the spires, faces flushed, tears streaming, and it all continued for nearly an hour. The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum.

Look it’s possible they were also tolling for the Pope, who died an hour earlier, but I’m going to say they were for Mum. And although none of us Wilsons are particularly religious, I did picture her at the gates of heaven, and I imagined a carnival atmosphere up there, just a great day to be at the pearly gates. And I thought two things. I thought firstly, there’s absolutely no way my beautiful, kind, generous mother isn’t getting into heaven. And secondly, I really hope she doesn’t let the Pope queue jump.

Of course Mum wouldn’t want me dwelling for too long at the gates of heaven in this eulogy. There’s a reason we’re at a reception centre and not a church. She was raised a North Balwyn Methodist, the eldest of five girls, and lived the tearaway social life you’d expect from North Balwyn Methodists in the 50s and early 60s. Even now, if an organist strays into this place and leans on the opening notes of ‘All People Who on Earth Do Dwell’, the three remaining Voutier girls will leap to their feet, ready for choral action. I’m not even ruling Mum out.

She was so smart, such an academic talent. In Year 7, she won a scholarship to MLC, but her father didn’t let her take it up because with four girls following, it might not be fair on everyone. Later, she graduated near the top of her class at Balwyn High, and went to Melbourne Uni to study Science and a Dip Ed. Teaching wasn’t her first choice, but her father again had strong views, this time that his daughters choose either nursing or teaching. These were the good jobs for girls, he reckoned, and that’s where the Commonwealth funded scholarships were too. Mum actually loved science, loved her science friends, although teaching not so much. A lot of the Year 12 boys at Benalla High asked her out during her teaching training year and she wasn’t a fan of that. She did courses throughout her life — computing courses in the early days of the Logo programming language, horticultural courses at Burnley, somehow fitting it all in between parenting four children. When she thought Sam’s Year 12 biology teacher was missing the mark, she purchased the first year uni text book and taught her the course herself. They got 100%. They got into medicine. Pippa did the same a few years later. Sam gave an amazing speech at Mum’s 75^th birthday about women of Mum’s generation and the sacrifices they made. So much of her talent, her phenomenal talent, was lavished on us.

She was a spectacular beauty, and it’s been a running joke amongst her four children that her puny, pretty genes were no match for dad’s pale balding genetic headkickers. We don’t care though. Who wants to be a nine or a ten anyway? It’s character building down in the sixes and sevens. I for one can walk past any building site and nobody ever hassles me.

It also gave Mum things to work on. It was impossible to enter a room without her commenting on my appearance. ‘Do you want me to shave your neck, darling?’ ‘What are you taking for your face rash? Do you think it’s because you’re drinking milk? I think it might be the dairy. Look at your nails! You can’t let them get like that? Do you want me to cut them? Does Tam cut them for you?’

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When I applied for Race Around the World in 1998, and made it to the finals, Mum had one of her greatest grooming masterstrokes. ‘I think you should tint your eyelashes’ she said. ‘It’ll work, I promise you, make your eyes seem bigger.’ A day or two later, I was in a salon — yes, we Wilson kids are nothing if not compliant — getting my lashes done. Six months later, me and my long irresistible lashes won Race Around the World. Was it all because of the eyelashes? Well we’ll never know, but, yes, yes Mum, it was.

Mum had her own television moment three decades earlier. In 1969, Dad was playing league footy at Hawthorn and the Sporting Globe and Channel 7 had a Miss Footy competition. The idea was that wives and girlfriends were circled in the paper, and for that glory alone you won you $5, some Dr Scholl’s orthopaedic sandals, a Volutis perm styled by Lillian and Antonio, and dinner at the Southern Cross Hotel. It was also an entry ticket to the Miss Footy Trivia Quiz on Channel 7s World of Sport. Mum’s face got circled but she was initially indifferent. The truth was she already had a pair of orthopaedic sandals and knew absolutely nothing about footy — also, the prize the previous year had been a trip to Mildura.

It all changed though when details of the 1969 prize were released. It was an all-expenses trip to Japan and Hong Kong, staying at the five star Mandarin hotels. The total value of the trip was more than Dad’s annual salary as a teacher. They’d been married two years and neither of them had ever been overseas before.

And so Mum rote learned the history of football, basically the whole lot, from Brownlow Medallists to club theme songs, club presidents, everything. Dad was her tutor and put lists all over the house. I can’t imagine how exciting this must have been for him. His young, beautiful bride whispering John Coleman’s career goalkicking stats into his ear. Mum learned it all, of course she did, and breezed into the last eight, then the last four, only to play out two tense grand final draws with Lyn Grinlington, a young teenage Hawks fan who, unlike Mum, actually liked football. Their rivalry captured the sporting world in the spring of 1969. ‘Beauty and Brains too!’ is one article we have clipped from the Herald. Another went with ‘Quiz Cuties at it Again’. In the end, Mum was simply too good. The winning question was ‘Which Richmond premiership player before the war coached a different team to a premiership after the war?’ The answer I hear you screaming is — Checker Hughes. Mum knew it, Lyn didn’t, and finally, gloriously, they were off to Japan and Hong Kong. Second prize was $50 worth of hair care products.

Between 1971 and 1979 she had the four of us, and she lavished so much love in our direction, it’s really difficult to describe. But she was demanding too. I only have to say words like Suzuki method, and Montessori technique for you to get a bit of an idea. She also convinced pre school Samantha that frozen peas were lollies. Imagine Sam’s surprise when she went to her first birthday party in prep. When Mum picked her up, the host mum said to our Mum, ‘I’m worried she’s going to be sick. She’s had nine chocolate crackles’. Ah Sam. What a moment. It’s hard to go back to frozen peas after copher.

She was also fanatical about restricting television, ‘half an hour a day, that’s it, then homework or reading.’ It was an ongoing espionage battle. Ned was our sentry, listening for the crunch of tyres on gravel when she was coming back from the shops. Sometimes, like a secret agent, she’d attempt surprise attacks, parking down the street and then sprinting in to place hand or cheek again the back of the box to feel if it was warm. If the Stasi caught us watching more than Get Smart, we’d be banned from Get Smart the following night. There were no real winners in this war. When I think about it, it’s an utter disgrace how many series she binged over the last few years. I should at least once have hid outside in the bushes and then jumped out. ‘Mum, no more Bridgeton! Go read your novel!’

Mum didn’t need any motivation to read novels. She was such a prolific reader, the east Melbourne library was a favourite place of hers. Ticking as it did two crucial Margaret Wilson boxes – the ones marked ‘books’ and ‘thrift’.

As a child, she read us everything from Seven Little Australians to The Wind in the Willows to Tolkien. As a teen, she put me onto John Wyndham, Aldous Huxley, JD Salinger, Margaret Atwood, Eli Wiesel, Toni Morrison and Clive James. As an adult she fed me Kate Atkinson, Cormac McCarthy, Kate Grenville, Ann Pratchett, Geraldine Brooks, Christopher Koch, Jennifer Egan and David Mitchell. And so many more, of course. She was never without a book or a reading recommendation. It was the same with the other kids, and the grandkids. She was Margaret Wilson, Mother of Readers. I said in a post this week, my father gave me sport, but my mother gave me words. It’s been difficult to find the right ones now. It’s unbelievable that she’s gone.

She’d even tolerate Macdonalds if it meant we’d read more books. In the eighties, she had a bribery deal going with us. If we went to Balwyn Library to choose new books, she’d allow us the fast food extravagance of a trip to the Maccas that shared the same carpark. One day, we were settling in for the rare treat of a junior burger, when out of nowhere she produced Tupperware containers. And what devilry was this?

They were filled with fresh lettuce, sliced tomatoes, cucumber, sliced cheese. ‘Mum, what are those!’ we hissed. ‘Well — ‘ she said, ‘I think my chopped salad is a fair bit healthier than their chopped salad. And I’ve got a nifty name for the burgers! We can call them Big Mags!

Big Mags. It’s mum’s Abbey Road in her discography of over-parenting.

There are some things I’ll always associate with Mum:

• Stylish clothes

• Fine art

• Bead necklaces

• A mastery of DIY dress ups

• Half finished coffees

• Cross word puzzles

• Tuna mornay

• Chops

• Inadequate sunscreening

• A VTAC insiders knowledge of which VCE subjects get standardised up and which go down;

• Reedy hymn singing

• 3MBS and ABC Classic FM

• Replacement swear words like ‘sheeba’, ‘ruddy’, and ‘blow me down’;

• Apologetic phone calls, ‘I’m sorry are you at work?’;

• Nervous gasps of ‘oh god’ from the passenger seat;

• A love of bargains;

• A desire for two for one surgery – go in for your hip replacement, get your varicose veins done at the same time! It brought untold joy when Harry had his lens columboma and herniated belly button fixed under the same anaesthetic;

• Fine interior decorating and an obsession with things looking stylish. Let’s never forget that Mum made this tasteful grey lid cover for her recycling bin, because she thought the yellow lid was spoiling the ambience of her front yard;

• Hairbrained schemes;

• Scrabble;

• Her hugs at the end of each visit;

• The sense that when I was growing up, I had the best mum – the smartest mum, the most beautiful mum. And it went for dad too. The sense we had the best parents.

None of us were ready for this.

One of the sentences I love most in the eulogy section of Speakola is from Stephen Colbert, whose mother Lorna had eleven children, lost three, lived to 92, and was a supermum on par with our own. In the week of her death he said on his show:

I know it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish, it only magnifies the enormity of the room whose doors have quietly shut.

The fact is our own Mum’s room could have been so much smaller. I remember I was in the Clyde when I called her in 1993 and she told me that she had bowel cancer with lymphatic involvement. The pub was noisy and it was surreal — a 50-50 chance of survival, a coin toss. I remember feeling numb and sick. We had to face up to the possibility of losing her when she was just 48. Pippa said to me the other day, ‘I couldn’t have handled losing her then. We don’t get more time now, but imagine if we’d lost her then.’ The fact she did that year of chemo, and she did it so bravely and without a ‘why me’, or a word of complaint — and the fact we were lucky — so many people get cancer and just aren’t lucky.

I’m so grateful my beautiful mum got to enjoy old age, got to meet her amazing, talented grandchildren, see then all get to double figures. I couldn’t have handled losing her then either.

I stood alone with Mum’s body on Tuesday and thanked her for everything. I thanked her for giving me life, and for giving me THIS life. She gave all of us her natural intelligence, which is part of the genetic pot luck, but she did everything else with such unbelievable energy and effort. She read to us, she put endless time into every interest or hobby, and she conquered the everyday mayhem of having four children, and Tam and I know, it’s a bloody mountain. Washing, bathing, shopping, medicating, comforting, disciplining, feeding, cleaning up, driving, counselling, in her case, a lot of optometry, just endless, thankless, mothering. Mum did it year after year, and she did it at A+ level.

Mum, I think of you at the end, alone, and it’s heartbreaking. I wish I’d been there to tell you I love you, to thank you for all that you’ve given us. I hope there wasn’t any pain, or if there was, that it was brief, I hope you weren’t too afraid, and that you felt our embrace — of Dad and us kids and your grandkids and your sisters and your friends. I really hope you felt that. We’re your boats that you set free upon the water. I know that you were proud of us. Your last words to me were on the phone at the airport were ‘have a great trip, you’ve earned it’. Well I’ll say the same back to you Mum. Have a great trip. You’ve earned it.

So long, Mum. We’ll miss you and think of you always.

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Ange & The Boss on SBS On Demand

This isn’t speech related, but our doco Ange & The Boss is up on SBS On Demand in Australia. You can watch it for free here.

Good one, Wilson!

Ange & The Boss is on SBS tonight!

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4 months ago · 7 likes · Tony Wilson

It’s an incredible story, an attempt at revolution almost certainly doomed to failure, and yet it becomes the blood sacrifice that is the foundation stone of the modern Irish Republic.

There is an Easter Uprising episode of The Rest is History that is in the pantheon of that incredible podcast, which features historian Professor Paul Rouse.

Rouse tells the story spectacularly. It begins with an attempt by British diplomat turned Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement to import German guns via a submarine drop in Cork, a mission which was intercepted by the British and resulted in Casement’s execution for treason. His speech at his trial is up on Speakola.

Despite the non arrival of German weapons, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers and the other revolutionaries decided to push on with the planned uprising on Easter Sunday. There was indecision though, and Eoin Macneil of the Volunteers published a countermanding order in the Dublin press calling off ‘military maneuvers’.

The leaders of the IRB decided to push on, nevertheless, shifting the day of reckoning to Easter Monday. They hoisted a sign at Dublin’s Liberty Hall saying, ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser’ and entered the post office building. Pearse read his Proclamation of the Irish Republic:

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people.

In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN Mac DIARMADA THOMAS MacDONAGH
P. H. PEARSE EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Although the British were initially taken by surprise, not enough Dubliners joined the Uprising, approximately 2000 rather than the hoped for 20,000, and when thousands of British soldiers mobilised, the rebellion was defeated. By the following Saturday, the Irish Republican Brotherhood had signed an unconditional surrender. Of the 485 people killed, 260 were civilians, 143 were British military and police personnel, and 82 were Irish rebels, including 16 rebels executed for their roles in the Rising. There was an idea amongst the rebels that ‘blood sacrifice’ would turn the Irish population towards the nationalist cause.

As Rouse says, it does become a ‘sacral story’. The executions went on for an interminable ten days, and public outrage crystallised into support for Sinn Fein as a mass revolutionary movement.

If you’re a little bit interested in all this, listen to Paul Rouse episode, it really is brilliant. Rouse also recommends R.F. Foster’s ‘Vivid Faces - The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923’ and William Irwin Thompson’s The Imagination Of An Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916

Apart from being an accelerant towards independence, the Easter Uprising fuelled endless great art, from Yeats to U2. It was called ‘the Poets Revolution’, even at the time. Here is the last verse of William Butler Yeats’s immortal ‘Easter, 1916’:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born

I had a go at getting Professor Rouse on Speakola to talk about Pearse’s speech. I got a no from Professor Rouse, and it’s a tricky and time consuming business finding guests, recording interviews, editing the audio and basically keeping the podcast going. Your support here for Speakola is a vote for the project, whether it’s the podcast, the speech library, this newsletter, or some other facet. It’s a one person project. Your donations and subscriptions are Speakola’s only revenues.

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It’s possibly The Greatest itself. I’m talking about the monologue, not the boxer.

If one of the 4.6 million views of this video isn’t you, you should rectify that now. Billy Crystal’s 1979 masterpiece ‘15 Rounds’ is a in-character journey through the storied career of Muhammad Ali, delivered in front of Ali, and with champ’s reactions inset into the corner. It was delivered and televised as part of a retirement tribute at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California.

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Crystal’s ear for accents and voices is astonishing. He perfectly inhabits both Ali and Howard Cosell, the legendary broadcaster who was sometimes the butt of Ali jibes and putdowns. The use of the bell to progress the life story gives the monologue forward propulsion. Crystal also lays off the jokes — most of the laughs come from Ali’s wit, or audience appreciation for the beauty of the impression. Crystal leans into the power of the Ali story — from changing his name away from the slave name Cassius Clay, to embracing Islam, to being a conscientious objector over his conscription to serve in Vietnam, to the glorious highs of Zaire and Manilla, to the final, inevitable decline as age overtakes him.

I’ve put the full transcript up on Speakola, but it’s the last round, the one underscored by the emotional piano, that is the climax of an incredible ten minutes of oratory: [watch the whole thing, I urge you. Words on the page fall a mile short of conveying the genius]

[BELL] [As Ali] [Soft piano] He surprised me that Spinks. I guess at the age of 36, I couldn’t train like I want to train, couldn’t do the things in the ring I want to do, gave that ugly sucker the first seven rounds and tried to come back after him. Just gave away too much. Every time I reached back for that something to knock him out, just wasn’t there. Hell, he was so ugly. I figured ain’t no way he could beat me. Oh, Leon. Yeah, they took away his driver’s licence.he walked into a telephone pole. Everybody’s saying to me now, they’re saying, “Hey Champ, you must feel bad you ain’t champ no more. You lost to some kid who looked like a train ran through his face.” I say, “Hey, hey man, I ain’t getting nothing to be sorry about. You see, everybody in life suffers a loss. You see, it’s the one who can overcome the loss and make a success of himself that’s really doing something. [applause] As I look back over my career, I was heavyweight champion 14 years ago, man. Ain’t that something? 14 years ago. I had a great life. Allah has been good to me. 59 professional fights, made a lot of money, got beautiful kids, great family, got everything to look forward to.
But something’s eating at me. I don’t want to go out losing to no Leon Spinks with eight professional fights. I don’t want to be remembered as being out of shape in that ring in Las Vegas. I want him one more time. And I’m going to do it. I’m 36 years of age, my body’s tired. I don’t like training very much, but starting tomorrow, I’m getting in shape for that rematch with Leon. Getting up early, I’m going to run with the moon! I’m going to start hitting that table and doing those pushups, doing sit ups, going to take the punches ... do whatever I have to do, and I’m going to run. And I want to be the first man ever to win the title for the third time. Nobody’s ever done anything like that. But then again, nobody’s ever done anything quite like me. And I’m predicting that I’m going to do it because I want to be the heavyweight champ for the third time. Because I can do it. And you can do it too! No matter what you is in life, no matter what colour, no matter what religion, it’s never too late to start all over again. Never forget that. And you’ll never forget me. I am the greatest of all time!’

[TRIUMPHAL MUSIC, ARMS RAISED, DANCING AROUND STAGE]

My spot with Tony Moclair (3AW Afternoons)

Tony is one of the radio people who have made me their ‘speeches guy’. (I’m open to the role, and it doesn’t have to be just Oz radio with facetime /whatsapp etc). This segment was about Pamela Anderson’s tour of Australia, and we took talkback on speakers /celebrities /motivators you’d pay to see.

Have you paid to go see a speaker? Was it a showbiz star or a political heavy hitter like Clinton or Obama?

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I saw Billy Crystal interviewed at the Arts Centre by back in 2016, and he treated us to some Ali (but not the full 15 Rounds).

Billy Crystal also delivered a Muhammad Ali tribute when Ali died, and again, it’s note perfect. I’ll post it below for paid subscribers below.

Latest post on personal Substack, Good one Wilson!

I ordered a Free Imran Khan T-shirt, thanks to .

Good one, Wilson!

Free Imran Khan

My ‘Free Imran Khan’ T-shirt arrived yesterday. They are available from Cricket et al — the Gideon Haigh and Peter Lalor led site that is a must for cricket fans. I chose a maroon background, which in retrospect belongs more to a Windies colour scheme, but I’m not sure I have the skin tones to pull off Pakistani lime green…

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5 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Tony Wilson

For Muhammad Ali: ‘He is gone, but he will never die’, by Billy Crystal - 2016

10 June 2016, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, uh, we’re at the halfway point [crowd laughs]. I was clean-shaven when this started.

Dear Lonnie, family, friends, Mr. President [Clinton], members of the clergy, all of these amazing people here in Louisville. Today, this outpouring of love and respect proves that 35 years after he stopped fighting, he is still the champion of the world.

Last week, when we heard the news, time stopped. There was no war, there were no terrorists, no global catastrophes; the world stopped, took a deep breath and sighed.

Since then my mind has been racing through my relationship with this amazing man, which is now 42 years that I know him. Every moment I can think of is cherished. And while others can tell you of his accomplishments, he wanted me to speak and tell you of some personal moments that we had together.

I met him in 1974, I was just getting started as a stand-up comedian and struggling. But I had one good routine: it was a three-minute conversation between Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali where I would imitate both of them.

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He was a tall man with a voice that was made for the airwaves. It had such clarity, such astonishing baritone, that you might have thought he was Australia’s answer to Casey Kasem rather than a sports commentator. Then you found out that he actually was a Top 40 radio on Perth’s 6KY in 1968. Of course he was. I can imagine him back announcing The Easybeats or The Shadows or the Stones even though I never heard him do it, inserting witticisms, allowing that honeyed voice to flow, cuing forth the Summer of Love.

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At the same time he was a serious footballer. Cometti never spoke much about it during his decades behind the microphone, but in 1968 he booted 63 goals for West Perth in the WAFL as a 19 year old. He’d never hit the same heights again, but coach Polly Farmer wrote ‘Dennis had just turned 19 and was well over 6 foot with the ability and agility of a co-ordinated rover. We thought we had a champion.’1

It wasn’t to be. He tried out at Footscray, but landed just four reserves games. He’d return to West Perth to coach. In the end, the temptation to pair that voice with a sport he’d played to a high level was irresistible, and Cometti made the progression from Perth sports radio to syndicated national calls to national television front liner to national treasure.

He was a broadcasting natural who thrived on preparation. There are no other football commentators who have ever inserted pre-prepared quips with such aplomb, and we had him on our Triple R Breakfasters show in 2006 when he was releasing his book, ‘Centimetre Perfect’ in 2004. He talked about the extent his gags were extemporised versus pre-prepared.

For football fans, the classics are timeless:

"Barlow to Bateman. The Hawks are attacking alphabetically ..."
”Gaspar — the unfriendly post”
"Remember the name: Y-Z-E—terrific young player; bad Scrabble hand."
(After a player was poked in the eye): "Liberatore went into that last pack optimistically and came out misty optically."

Cometti himself named this as his favourite:

Maybe one where I was able to combine my two art forms, and use a line from the Rolling Stones.

Crows champion) Andrew McLeod was involved in a skirmish, and the umpires had come in to say to the players to break it up, which allowed me to go with, ‘Hey, you, get off McLeod’.

I thought at the time, ‘how good is that’?

And no one said a word!2

There is a great short speech from Cometti on YouTube, and I’ll add it to Speakola. It’s from the Australian Football Media Awards in 2002, when Cometti received the Most Outstanding Caller (Television) gong.

What’s notable, apart from the trademark fluency, is that rather than flapping a shopping list of thank yous, Cometti dedicates most of his speech to a joke. And it’s a decent joke too, told quickly and skillfully and it works because broadcasters don’t usually tell set em up knock em down punchline gags at events like this, so the element of surprise that most jokes need is working for him.

It’s terrible news that we’ve lost him. It was a thrill to meet Dennis a few times, and to write an AFL Finals promo he voiced just after his retirement.

He has his place in the sports media pantheon.

I’ll copy the AFMA speech transcript below.

Best wishes

Tony

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Dennis Cometti: ‘Do you know about the tradition of the two envelopes?’, AFMA, Melbourne, 2002

Thank you to CUB and the Association

Thank you to everybody at Channel 9, I’ve called football for something like 30 years and i can’t remember a more enjoyable season. I’d like to say congratulations to Cos Cardone who put the project together for Channel9 , and also thank Eddie McGuire. He is like the Red Adair of football in this town —starts fires, puts them out but I’ve got to say he’s never kissed me.3

it’s been a thrill working on the AFL this season and as i say i can’t remember a better season, but things changed very quickly in football, and in broadcasting. i’m reminded of just a short story—

i remember when i took over as coach of West Perth in the WAFL and I got a call from Graham Campbell who was the outgoing coach. He said, ‘Do you know about the tradition of the two envelopes? I said, ‘No I don’t.” He said, “It’s self-explanatory I’ll be straight over.’

He arrived at my doorstep with two envelopes. Written on one was “to be opened when things go bad”. Written on the other was “to be opened when things get even worse”.

First season was okay, halfway through the second season we lost about four in a row and I decided to check inside the first envelope. It said, “blame your predecessors”.

Well of course that is the first fallback position of anyone in football. A failed coach, that’s what you do automatically.

Unfortunately, we lost a few more games, probably another five straight as I recall, I decided well it’s getting bleak, there’s almost rebellion in the camp, I better have a look at the second of the envelopes to be opened when things get even worse was written on that one

And inside when I looked it said, ‘prepare two envelopes’.

Thank you very much.

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• Latest episode of the podcast has singer Meg Washington talking about stuttering, and the way music and singing helps stutterers.

A story about my son, Jack

I was told by my friend Tom Hannan at Pulp last night that this is his favourite piece of mine I’ve written. It’s the latest post in Good one, Wilson

Good one, Wilson!

Playlunch at the Espy

‘Do you know why I’m lucky, Dad…

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6 months ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Tony Wilson

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms

Meg Washington’s is such a multi-talented artist. She’s been blowing us away with the quality of her voice since she made Alan Brough cry on Spicks and Specks back in 2009.

She was in her early twenties then, she’s in her late thirties now, and it’s already an amazing career that has encompassed three ARIAS, five albums, an AACTA award for Best Original Song (‘Fine’, I’ve sneaked a chorus into the episode) a voice acting part as Calypso on Bluey, and a screenwriting role on the AACTA nominated film ‘How to Make Gravy’, which came out last year.

This Speakola episode is about her TEDx Talk in 2014, and twelve years later it still stands up as a beautifully warm, informative, funny and uplifting speech about speech impediment. At various points she discusses:

• Being unsure on arrival at the TEDx event whether she was supposed to speak, or just sing;

• Being coached by a friend in the UK, who told Meg to be less 'expert on stuttering’ and more ‘expert on herself stuttering’. In other words make it more personal;

• Techniques stutterers use, like ‘smooth speech’ and surprising the brain by changing a potentially problematic word at the last minute;

• Early life in Port Moresby, and first memorable singing performance (as a flea!)

• How her professional career got started, and the assistance of Paul Grabowski and Spicks and Specks;

• The feeling of delivering the speech in the Opera House, and walking to a party afterwards. with your name trending on Twitter (audio snippet below)

There are so many good bits in this episode! Subscribe to the podcast, and if you felt like it, give us a rating or review on the podcast apps! At the moment we’re going at 4.9⭐ from 159 ratings and reviews. It would be a big boost to get some feedback. The podcast has been a labour of love these last six years. Sixty one episodes, all sourced, recorded, edited and promoted by just me.

Meg Washington’s is one of the best yet.

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Megan Washington: ‘The thing is, I stutter’, TEDx Sydney - 2014

26 April 2014, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia

I didn’t know when I agreed to do this whether I was expected to talk or to sing.

But when I was told that the topic was language, I felt that I had to speak about something for a moment.

I have a problem. It’s not the worst thing in the world. I’m fine. I’m not on fire. I know that other people in the world have far worse things to deal with, but for me, language and music are inextricably linked through this one thing.

And the thing is that I have a stutter.

It might seem curious given that I spend a lot of my life on the stage. One would assume that I’m comfortable in the public sphere and comfortable here, speaking to you guys.

But the truth is that I’ve spent my life up until this point and including this point, living in mortal dread of public speaking. Public singing, whole different thing. (Laughter) But we’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve never really talked about it before so explicitly. I think that that’s because I’ve always lived in hope that when I was a grown-up, I wouldn’t have one.

I sort of lived with this idea that when I’m grown, I’ll have learned to speak French, and when I’m grown, I’ll learn how to manage my money, and when I’m grown, I won’t have a stutter, and then I’ll be able to public speak and maybe be the prime minister and anything’s possible and, you know.

(Laughter)

So I can talk about it now because I’ve reached this point, where — I mean, I’m 28.I’m pretty sure that I’m grown now.

(Laughter)

And I’m an adult woman who spends her life as a performer, with a speech impediment. So, I might as well come clean about it.

There are some interesting angles to having a stutter. For me, the worst thing that can happen is meeting another stutterer.

(Laughter)

This happened to me in Hamburg, when this guy, we met and he said,”Hello, m-m-m-my name is Joe,” and I said, “Oh, hello, m-m-m-my name is Meg.” Imagine my horror when I realised he thought I was making fun of him.

(Laughter)

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The Reverend Jesse Jackson commanded a stage like few speakers in history. He was also a man for a moment: in the building on the night Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated; alongside Nelson Mandela on the day he was released; envoy to Iraq to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of human shield hostages on the eve of the First Gulf War; he ran for president, he was a shadow Senator, he stood in front of a crowd of a million people in Hyde Park to argue against the Second Iraq War in 2003.

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He was a titan of 20th century politics, a speaker in the MLK mould who was captivating with his preacher’s tone and his lyrical and descriptive phrasing. The speech I’ve attached here is one of his most famous but also one of his simplest. It was a call and response introduction to the Wattstax Music Festival in 1972, convened as a celebration and a commemoration by African American artists on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots.

It’s like a soul classic itself, and well worth a listen as well as a read. I’ll attach the transcript below.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, himself a civil rights champion with a mastery of the spoken phrase, paid tribute as follows: ‘Our nation lost one of its greatest moral voices. A man who carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice.”

He was indeed somebody.

Jesse Jackson: ‘I Am Somebody’, Wattstax Music Festival - 1972

20 August 1972, Los Angeles Coliseum, California, USA

Wattstax was a benefit-concert put together by Stax Records to commemorate the community of Watts, Los Angeles after its 1965 Riots

This is a beautiful day… It is a new day… it is a day of black awareness, it is a day of black people taking care of black people’s business… We are together, we are unified… and all in accord… Because when we are together we got power… and we can make decisions…

Today on this program you will hear gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz. All those are just labels. We know that music is music… All of our people have got a soul, our experience determines the texture, the tastes and the sounds of our soul. We may say that we are may be in the slum but the slum is not in us. We may be in the prison, but the prison is not in us. In what we have shifted from, burn baby burn to learn baby learn. We have shifted from having a seizure about what the man got, to seizing what we need. We have shifted from bed bugs and dog ticks to community control and politics.

That is why we’ve gathered today, to celebrate our homecoming and our own sense of somebodyness. That is why I challenge you now to stand together, raise your first together, and engage in our famous black litany. Do it with courage and determination:

I am ...[I am!]

Somebody... [somebody!]

I am ... [I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be poor ... [I may be poor!]

But I am ... [but I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be on welfare ... [I may be on welfare!]

But I am ... [but I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I may be unskilled ... [I may be unskilled!]

But I am ... [But I am!]

Somebody ... [somebody!]

I am ... [I am!]

Black ... [black!]

Beautiful ... [beautiful!]

Proud ... [proud!]

And must be respected ... [and must be respected]!

I must be protected ... [I must be protected!]

I am God’s child ... [I am God’s child]

When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]

When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]

What time is that ... [nation time!]

What time is that ... [nation time!]

Mr Kim Weston ... the black national anthem.

I Am - Somebody was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr., senior pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church and civil rights activist in Atlanta, Georgia.

A Sesame Street version

I will post another Jesse Jackson speech tomorrow, his concession speech at the 1984 DNC Convention, one of the great speeches.

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In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. [Laughter and cheers.] They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. [Cheers.] And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed. [Cheers.

A longer excerpt is up on Speakola.

Lincoln had long been a champion of immigration, and during the Civil War, he was particularly ardent that immigration should be encouraged, as factory and farm workers were drafted out of occupations to serve in the military. Lincoln regarded new arrivals as assets, a vital replenishment to a labour market under the strain of war.

In his third State of the Union, on 8th of December 1863, the president said:

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Washington was being presented with a Most Outstanding Actor gong for ‘Fences’, a film he also directed and which co-starred Viola Davis. He launched into the speech by honouring the artist who’s work was being adapted, the African American playwright August Wilson. Wilson died in 2005 aged just sixty. and is sometimes dubbed ‘theatre's poet of Black America’ —best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle.

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Washington names five playwrights to open his speech, four of them are white and world famous, and then there’s Wilson. It’s an entry point to discussing other African Americans who are making outstanding films, which brings him specifically to Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight (and more recently, Mufasa).

Having heard excepts, I always thought Washington was talking about himself when it came to his, ‘without commitment you’ll never start … without consistency you’ll never finish’, but it’s far less mawkish and more generous for the fact that he’s elevating Jenkins, his Oscar nominated rival for Best Director.

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The funeral was on the 5th of January at the St Kilda RSL, and not the St Kilda Bowls Club — which is where I arrived at the published start time. It was a frantic race to the line, but I arrived in time to hear a succession of amazing eulogies from friends, relatives and colleagues of Amanda Brotchie.

She was a startlingly high achiever. A doctorate of…

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I’ve just finished season three of Stranger Things, which isn’t the sunniest depiction of Cold War tensions. The Russians spend most of season three inhabiting an undetected weapons lab under the mall in a small town American town, which stretched credibility a fraction, and definitely situated the show pre-glasnost and perestroika. When we cut to Russia, the guards are feeding American prisoners to ravenous demogorgans. It’s definitely 1985.

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In real history timelines, the Cold War thaw was on by New Year’s Day 1988, precipitated by a Soviet economy collapsing under the strains of the Reagan administration’s accelerated nuclear arms race, including the Star Wars missile defence program. General Secretary Gorbachev was a moderate confronting a political reality that involved independence movements, economic crises, and a thirst for westernisation, especially amongst the youth.

President Reagan often gets the credit for ending the Cold War, especially from Republican hawks, but I find it unsettling that ‘peace by escalation’ is the contribution we’re celebrating. Did he really think he would spend the USSR into submission, or did he escalate because he was a ‘force with force’ personality type, and that’s what they do? It could have been disastrous if Gorbachev had been a less visionary leader himself, or if the USSR had continued to prioritise military spend.

Having said that, the peace we celebrated in the 90s really was a false dawn when it came to Russia. The wall came down, there was much ideological triumphalism, ‘The End of History’ is the only article every person of my generation remembers from early 90s undergraduate reading1. Whatever we see now in Russia — a dictator, a warmonger, an anti-democratic strongman who appeals to nostalgia for the days of empire, was sewn in the chaos of the Russian experiment with 90s capitalism. The freedom the west invited Russians to at the end of the last century was a freedom for oligarchs to plunder the nation’s riches, one of the greatest asset heists in European history and one that set ordinary Russians against western democracy, and unfettered capitalism.

I’ve been distracted from this 1987 speech, which was the beginning of a time of optimism and hope. It’s worth a read, and a listen, even if only to remind yourself that amidst the fear and apprehension of the Cold War, there was a sense that the people in charge were motivated by civic duty, or could at least say the right words to give the impression they were motivated by civic duty.

We’re not so lucky now.

Best wishes and Happy New Year

Tony

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Ronald Reagan & Mikhael Gorbachev: ‘This is a season of hope and expectation’, New Year’s address - 1988

1 January 1988, Washington DC & Moscow

The leaders of USA and USSR addressed the people in one another’s respective countries in an innovative and Cold War thawing New Year’s address.

MR REAGAN: Good evening. This is Ronald Reagan, President of the United States. I’m speaking to you, the peoples of the Soviet Union, on the occasion of the new year.

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