Could Clegg improve his impact with better speechwriting and rehearsal?

As is explained in my books and illustrated by numerous video clips posted on this blog, the contrast is one of the most important and reliable rhetorical devices for triggering applause in speeches. So it can often be instructive to look at 'deviant cases', where they don't work quite as smoothly as they could or should have done, to see what went wrong and what, if anything, we can learn from them.

There was at least one such example during the Deputy Prime Minister's speech winding up yesterdays conference of the Liberal Democrats in Sheffield yesterday after a simple past/present contrast:

Clegg: "We cherished those values in opposition. Now we're living by them in government."

But, as you'll see, the applause didn't start straight away and, when it did, after his first "So yes", it sounded somewhat lukewarm (i.e. not only delayed, but also lasting well below the 'standard' burst of 8 ± 1 seconds):

It could. of course, be argued that this merely reflected the audience's ambivalence about their party's involvement in the coalition government. But there were at least two technical errors without which it could have induced a much more prompt and longer-lasting response.

1. Better scripting?

In stead of using a pronoun ('them') to refer to 'those values' in the second part of the contrast, the speechwriters could have made the sequence work better by repeating 'those values', so that it read as follows:

"We cherished those values in opposition.

Now we're living by those values in government."

2. Better rehearsal?

A second reason why the audience delayed before applauding was that Clegg didn't stop immediately after the second part of the contrast, but rushed on to continue with "so yes-'.

This may have been because he was too glued to the words coming up on the screens and was 'teleprompted' onwards, or because he hadn't rehearsed it enough beforehand - or perhaps a combination of the two.

In any event, a rather crucial line only managed to prompt a delayed and lukewarm response, leaving him looking vaguely perplexed as to what to do next, other than repeating the same two words waiting there on the screens.

So what?

You might think that this hardly mattered on a day when the news was dominated by the Japanese earthquake. And you'd be dead right, were it not for the fact that this particular sequence was one of the few that actually did make it on to the prime-time news bulletins last night and, via ITN, on to YouTube.

Related posts

• On Clegg's walkabout style of delivery

On delayed and/or lukewarm applause

• Delayed applause at a key point in Nick Clegg's conference speech
• Delayed applause in Vince Cable's speech (at same point as in Clegg's)
• More lessons from Vince Cable's speech
• Delayed applause for Ed Miliband's claims on the 'centre ground'
• Delayed applause for William Hague's boast about being in government
• Delayed applause, poor speech writing & delivery strike again in Osborne's speech
• Delayed applause for Cameron's government - from the Conservatives!
• BIG SOCIETY: little applause

Why I never signed the ThatchCard

Here's the latest discovery from my continuing office removal. I can't remember where it came from, but it was probably a gift from Lord Gnome of Private Eye.

Note that I never actually signed it - for the obvious reason that my interest in analysing political speeches meant that I'd have welcomed the chance of meeting her in her prime, for research purposes, you understand - and this far outweighed any sympathy I might have had for the message being purveyed by the ThatchCard's publisher.

What if?

Moving my office from one room to another has forced me to venture back into ancient files and make daily decisions about what to throw out and what to keep.

I'd forgotten that I still had this letter from the then secretary of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club inviting me to some Schoolboys' coaching sessions at Headingley. The deal was that, if they thought you were any good, you'd become a 'Yorkshire Colt', which meant that the YCCC would pay for your bus fare when you came for further coaching sessions. In short, we all knew that this could be the first step towards our sporting dream.

Coaches and autographs

When we got there, we had to line up and take it in turns to bat and bowl in the nets, closely watched by the two grumpy looking county coaches of the day, Arthur Mitchell and Maurice Leyland. Every now and then, one or other of them would growl "Next", which was, as far as I remember, the sum total of the 'coaching' any of us received.

Meanwhile, various current and former county players would wander around inspecting the 'talent'. They looked just as grumpy as Mitchell and Leyland, but their presence did at least give us the chance to collect a few autographs. Len Hutton's was the most impressive one I got, but I do remember being quite disappointed that he signed my book 'Leonard Hutton' - if only he'd read Wikipedia, he'd surely have known that he was 'commonly named Len Hutton'.

You'll have gathered, of course, that although I did manage to reach the Headingley schoolboy nets two years running, I didn't pass the Mitchell-Leyland test. So it's all their fault that I had to find something else to do when I grew up.

If only

Thirty years later, on discovering I might need reading glasses, I went for my first ever eye test - which also revealed that I had slight astigmatism. "Is that also age-related?" I asked, to which the optician replied "No, you'll have had it all your life."

Realising that, if only I'd had the right specs in 1955, I might have made it back to Headingley on a full-time basis. I was initially overwhelmed by depression, wondering what on earth I was doing in Oxford when I could/should have been coming to the end of a glorious career playing for Yorkshire. But then it dawned on me that there was quite a big silver lining after all.

The silver lining

Given my age and the fact that one of my specialisms was as an opening batsman, my dream coming true would also have condemned me to years of having to go in to bat as (junior/younger) partner to Geoffrey Boycott (who did have the right specs).

Compared with him, I suspect, even other academics were not only much more congenial as colleagues, but they also liberated me from a career that would have been plagued by the daily fears and frustrations of being run out.