Slideshows during speeches

At last Saturday's wedding, the best man's speech was built round a PowerPoint presentation of the groom's life.

Early on the day, he carefully set up screen, projector and laptop and did a complete run through to check all was well. He even marked on the floor the position of the projector table and the screen, so that when the time came to set up during the meal, he knew exactly where they needed to be. Then having satisfied himself that all was well, he dismantled everything and got on with enjoying the day.

Come speech time, he set everything up in a couple of minutes, switched on, and ... nothing happened. Nothing happened because the lead from his laptop to the projector, which was working perfectly earlier, had developed a fault. And he had no spare.

In the circumstances, he cobbled together an entertaining enough speech, and in fact ran the presentation on his laptop later at the bar, but all his preparation was in vain.

Which I guess only goes to show that if your speech relies on technology of any kind, it's wise to have a backup plan in case that technology lets you down on the night ...