HUMOUR: Barack Obama - The Lost Speeches

Uncle Bill’s Pancake House

Chicago, IL (27 Sept, 2004)

Today, I have been on a journey. Only a couple of blocks from my home, but yet further. A journey beyond those two blocks, beyond my city, beyond my state, and into your state, your city. Your neighborhood. A journey across and throughout the 50 United States of America, this great nation of ours upon which the sweet unfolding of history has placed an Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in every district. A place where honour and tradition stand shoulder to shoulder with optimism and renewal. In my right hand I hold the menu, and as my eyes fall upon that menu I see hope. Real hope. The Multi-Berry Special is a pancake combo where tastes and textures and flavors all mix together to form something new; something different; and something special - an imperfect place made more perfect through its promise of cream on the side. If we order this, then we can begin to turn the page on the invisible barriers - the single berry options - that once ravaged this menu and this establishment: the old divisions of blueberry or blackberry versus strawberry or raspberry. It's time to leave that to yesterday. It's time to choose tomorrow. A tomorrow that will see a new dawn: gluten-free vanilla plum jam. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, it is gluten-free at last! Yet still we are to arrive at the most important question of all: who’s going to pick up the tab for this breakfast? There can only be one answer. We are. Together. Paying for it with the closest available waitress and paying for it right now, because, my friends, we all know how it is to wait for change. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time [sits down]. Could I get some napkins, please? [Waitress: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring ’em to ya.]

Jiffy Lube

Oklahoma City, OK (4 Feb, 2007)

In franchised automobile service centers and Main Street repair shops, in people’s own garages and right here in this room, the questions are all the same. Will my car leave here in better shape than when it came in? Will my car even be fixed by tomorrow? Who will finally sort out the pinking noise, that age-old symptom of maladjusted ignition timing? This is the Subaru Legacy you inherit today. It's a Legacy of fast-worn fan-belts, a Legacy of lost tire irons somewhere behind the back seat, but above all a Legacy of achieving the greatest triumphs amidst the greatest odds. And surprisingly reasonable gas consumption. It's a story as American as any - that at the edge of despair, ordinary people come to the extraordinary realisation that if we opt for the Jiffy Lube Signature Service^® Oil Change, we can cruise freely down future highways. Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in tinkering beneath the hood on a Sunday afternoon. But it has also depended on our collective well of gratitude for the fast lube industry, of mutual respect. Everybody has a car in the driveway, and everybody's got a shot at acquiring speedy car maintenance. Americans know this. We know, too, that Jiffy Lube can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things done better by a guy with access to a hydraulic car lift. I won't stand here and say that fixing the pinking noise will be easy, or pretend to know all the answers. But there's a few places we can start. If we raise the hood together, we raise hope. If we raise… yeah, sure, here are the keys.

MUSIC: Strummerville

As originally published in the Daily Telegraph:

Madness Live Review

Palace Theatre, Bridgwater, Somerset (Tue 8 Jan)

“My hand’s going in here… pink!” You’re listening to the sound of Alan Yentob calling the raffle. “81!” He stands onstage beneath a high vaulted ceiling, overlooked by a large rear balcony, surrounded by purple walls, like Brixton Academy made over by a youth club. Though, if memory serves, the Academy doesn’t have a test your strength punch bag on the way in. Welcome to Strummerville. They do things differently here.

Three weeks before his death, Joe Strummer played the Palace himself. Five years on, friends – celebrity and otherwise – are raising money for the Engine Room, a charity set up in his honour to help aspiring musicians from – and infrastructure of - his adopted hometown. “There are 500 Tauntons across the South West, but only one Bridgwater!” cries patron, Julien Temple, another to fall for the historically arty charms of a place often written off as an impoverished urban blot on the dramatically sweeping West Country landscape. He’s about to introduce an act that some refuse to believe are here at all. “We sold all 800 tickets in 10 minutes,” he told me earlier, “but they were arguing in the street: ‘No, it must be a tribute band’.”

Madness are a step ahead of Bridgwater Town Hall in their regeneration plans. Last month they were the other band to pack out the O2 Arena. On Monday they’ll release new single ‘NW5’; in half an hour they’ll drop it into tonight’s greatest hits set and it will sound utterly seamless.

Roxy Music ace Andy Mackay (charcoal suit by Armani, yellow tie by Biggins) adds gratuitous sax to ‘One Step Beyond’, and so begins an hour of unremitting joy. Eight men and 20sq ft of stage means seven have to stand still. The other makes up for them. Patenting that stiff, animatronic dance style in his youth is paying big dividends for Suggs now – he could keep this up for years. The charm, longer still: “I knew it was going to be a lovely evening the moment I stepped into your fair town.”

‘Baggy Trousers’ strikes up. Balding men share knowing smiles and break into the time-honoured jogging on the spot dance. The rest of the room follows, and the Palace looks like the happiest all-ages gym in the world. ‘London Calling’ announces the encore and dancing continues through misty eyes. Next up at the Palace, says a brimming collection of adjectives on the door, is ‘the brilliant fantastic My Winehouse’. For tonight, though, the tribute bands can wait.