Angela Lansbury Speeches and Making Speeches

Music stand is set up with A4 notes. 
(Speaker staggers around stage swinging empty Mateus Rose bottle, and empty glass, pours out, nothing, holds up bottle, looks in bottle. Wipes eye.)

Leans against music stand which falls over.
Hic! Now you know why speakers are told not to drink, and not to rely on notes.
In vino veritas.
A drunk will tell you anything. But if you get drunk you won't remember it.
Dogenes said, what I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others. You'll be glad to know that he died some time ago. He was an ancient Greek. He lived to the age of ...

Benjamin Franklin said, Wine is proof that' God loves us and wants us to be happy.
My friend Bill Dempster of HOD speakers, in Toastmasters international, claimed that Benjamin Franklin was referring to whisky.
As Mandy Rice Davis, famously said at a trial in London, He would say that, wouldn't he.
This, as you can see, is an empty bottle. I shall talk about the average drinker's view of an empty wine bottle and a drink, and a drinker.

First - the empty wine bottle
An empty wine bottle produces one of two reactions, positive and negative. I can see from your hopeful, puzzled, slightly disappointed face that you were thinking, first, "Why isn't it full, I was hoping to drink some!'

GREEN
Why is the bottle green?
To protect wine from the light. Light and heat ruin wine. So you store your best bottle of champagne in a dark cellar, or a wine cabinet in the unheated dining room.

CHAMPAGNE
Champagne is expensive. Watch out for fakes.
More so-called Champagne is sold worldwide than is made in Champagne. It used to be said that it was Prosecco. French similar wine is called Cremant. Italian Prosecco and Spanish Cava are good sparkling wines,.So is Asti. Spumante means sparkling. Same applies to all wines. How do you spot a fake. If the name of the country is wrongly spelled on the label, that's a giveaway. A woman spotted Chardonnay spelled with s instead of C. Another fake label had Austr(a)lian with the middle a missing.

Ordinary wine is made from grapes and unlike sparkling wine has no bubbles.

OLD and YOUNG WINE
Red wine comes from red grape skins from black grapes. Young wine is pale, white, pale pink if you add a few grape skins. Deep red if allowed to stay on the skins, and mature in the bottle.
Joan Collins said, "Age is just a number, Totally irrelevant. Unless you happen to be a bottle of wine."
Sometimes wine has been left too long, or got corked, and oxidised, and gone brown.


Second what's in the glass?
HOW MUCH WINE IN UNITS?
How many units in the glass?
Not enough. If it's a small glass, only 125, I, a woman, can have two, over a two hour lunch or a day. Most men are taller, broader, and metabolise differently.
Six small 125 cl glasses in a 75 cl bottle. Only three large 250 cl glasses.

For more details go to the website of drink aware.

Your second thought was: "Why is the bottle empty? You should not have drunk all of that on your own.'


How many drinkers are in an English audience? On a Sunday?
CHRISTIANITY  and WINE
Sir Thomas Aquinus said, "Sorrow can be alleviated by a good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine."

In England, if I invite my Christian neighbours around, they are hoping for a drink.

In Singapore, if I invite my Christian neighbours around, they send a note of apology for absence, 'We are not allowed to drink on Sunday.'
In Singapore, Christians are converted by missionaries, and don't drink.

In England, Ireland, and Scotland, the average Christian person drinks. Most drinkers are nocturnal. You can see them staggering around the city centre on a Saturday night at midnight. Some have already gone home - to lie down.

If you wake up with a hangover, or headache, this is caused by dehydration. Or the memory of what you did. If you can't remember, ask your fiends. If they say they can't remember, you have good friends. If you have drunk more than you should you may wake up and see friends and family looking anxious.

Or you may see a nurse - or a policeman, with a breathalyser. In France the law says you have to carry your own breathalyser.

GREEN BOTTLES
You drink every week, drink communion. And all week you prepare for communion,  so you need to drink. Also you need something to confess in confession. Such as, Father, I've been drinking all week, everything except my last green bottle. There were ten green bottles hanging on the wall."

The priest says, "I remember them well. Didn't we have a good time! As a penance you must bring me the last bottle."

AVERAGE CONSUMPTION
Let's be serious. It's hard, but we'll try. The average English person drinks 20 litres a year. Take away all the teetotallers, children, hospital patients, Jews and Moslems, drivers, pilots.
That only leaves you and me. And the Bill. I don't drink that much. I told you that you were drinking too much.) (I told Bill he was drinking too much.)

Some drink more than the average, and some drink less than the average. You know what average means, a small number of non-drinkers pull down the average. The average person has 9.4 fingers, but the majority have ten. The average person drinks more than the average person.

This is a good subject for debate over a drink with the average person.

Where were we? Ah yes,

A drinker will think, "Why didn't you share it with me? A teetotaller will think, you shouldn't be drinking at all!"

I shall start with reasons why you shouldn't drink. Then why you should not drink too much. Then how to know what not to drink, then how to find out what not to drink.

Who doesn't know much about wine. Hands up. That was a rhetorical question. How many of you would like to know more? How many o you would like to know less? The first group are in luck.

Who are the people who don't know much about wine and don't drink much?

1 Those who are too young to drink. Not many of you look to young. Some of you are too old, but you are still drinking. Some say you are never too old to drink.

2 JEWS and MOSLEMS
Jews do not drink a lot. Though many rabbis have owned vineyards. The Rothschilds have owned vineyards.
You can buy a poster of Rothschild wine labels at Waddesdon Manor, a National Trust property, and see one in the Wine Society shop in Stevenage.
If you can't sell a wine, put a piece of art work on the bottle.
3 That doubles the number who buy the bottle. Some want to open the bottle and drink the contents. The others want to leave it unopened and put it on the shelf.

Moslems do not drink a lot. Often the owner of an Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi restaurant has a short wine list because the customers do not drink much wine or the owners do not know about wine.

The rule is, white wine with white meat or white fish and red wine, which has a stronger flavour, with dark meat. Sweet wines go with sweet dishes or desserts.

CHAMPAGNE BUBBLES
4 Champagne dates back to Roman times, It was used as a bubble bath at orgies when people swan naked in it. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, and I don't have time to demonstrate. We don't have time to see if it's an aphrodisiac.

In the early days, in France, bubbles were considered a fault. Thick bottles had to be used to stop the bottles exploding.

PINK CHAMPAGNE
Wines have a fashion. At one time Veuve Cliquot would not make pink Champagne because it was drunk in brothels.
As the humorous playwright Bernard Shaw said of the Pope and birth control, 'Why would I listen to him. Either he doesn't know anything about the subject, or he shouldn't.'

This century the Champagne producers started making pink Champagne and it became fashionable for weddings. Pink became a summer drink. Either people had forgotten, or they remembered fondly but wouldn't admit it.

Napoleon said, "In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it."
When Napoleon lost (at Waterloo), the Russians invaded France and pinched all the wines from Veuve Cliquot, as she watched them drinking her wine,
She said, stoically, "If they drink it free today, tomorrow they'll pay."

DON'T DRINK
We drink too much. Don't drink and drive.
Why?
Wine dehydrates you and gives you a headache.
It makes you argumentative. Don't argue with me.
There are five safety issues.
1You damage your liver, your stomach, your throat, you get mouth throat and stomach cancer and have heart attacks. Worrying about all this would give anybody a heart attack.
2 You have fights with strangers.
3 You lose your job.
4 Drink causes car accidents.
5 And increases the likelihood of your having unsafe sex. (Grins.) Hence, the song:
have some Madeira, m'dear. But, as
Shakesepeare said, "drink increases the desire but decreases the performance."

5 To sum up:
GOOD and BAD
Life is too short to drink bad wine. Nobody knows who said that first. But I said it first this evening.

Wine is good for me but it's bad for you.
Wine is bad for - your liver, and bad for your lover, you should drink to success but not to excess.

CORAVIN
If you have leftover wine, save it using a device called a Coravin, like cork and caravan. It enables you to put the cork back on the bottle and travel with it. Buy a Coravin from Harrods.

So, finally, you should not be drinking. If you have any bottles of drink at home, recycle them, by popping the cork back on, sticking them in your car, Campavan, or Caravan, and giving them to me.
Cheers!

Overmatter:
Designated decoy joke.