Paddy Ashdown's speech to the Liberal Democrat Conference earlier today made me wonder whether he might be reverting to type after the 32 years since he made his first televised speech at a Liberal Assembly.
Although not wearing a tie may have recently become the fashion among top politicians (and business leaders), it certainly wasn't in 1981 - even if you were a prospective parliamentary candidate who was going to have wait another two years before knowing whether or not you would succeed in becoming an M.P.
But that didn't stop the young PPC for Yeovil, who spoke sans tie and sans suit - though, as I noted in my original post of the clip, 'the podium unfortunately prevents us from seeing whether or not he was also wearing sandals' (HERE):
In the same post, I also noted 'This was Ashdown in post-military mode, barking out his lines to the troops' , and I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be quite a lot of 'barking' in the way he delivered his lines to the troops this morning (see the above clip).
But in one aspect of his delivery this morning he was not reverting to type, as he seems to have taken a leaf out of Nick Clegg's book when it comes to the apparently unscripted 'management guru' style of delivery - which, as regular readers will know, I regard as something of a mixed blessing, at least until the jury returns...
Other posts on the 'management guru' style of speaking:
- Ed Miliband's tour de force
- Clegg's conference speech: 'definitely OK, absolutely fine, without any doubt not bad'
- Cameron takes to the lectern in a crisis
- Gordon Brown goes walkabout (again)
(Next open course on Speech writing & Presentation details are HERE).
