Bruno's Column:
Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speeches [6]
Rhyme and Acronyms

Hello folks and welcome to this month's column, where we look at the creation of humour using rhyme and acronyms.

Rhyme

First of all: rhyme. This can be an amusing way to engage an audience.

When giving an after dinner speech I like to start by telling the audience something relevant to them before continuing with the main thrust of my speech.

For instance if I am speaking at a Rotary Club I tell them about the time I was taken on to entertain at a Rotary-organised event called the Belbroughton Scarecrow Weekend (where people dress as scarecrows and raise money for charity). I go on to tell them that I only accepted the job because I thought it was the Belbroughton Hair Grow Weekend. As I am bald this generally raises my first laugh.

So how do you go about inventing rhyme jokes? As ever, begin by brainstorming everything that you know about the Bride, Groom, their hobbies etc.

Next, go out and buy a rhyming dictionary. (Mine cost me £8.99). This is a useful tool for the future if you plan to write poems or songs, but in the short term it could provide you with a great laugh or two to enrich your speech. Let's look at a few examples:

Example 1

Take a Groom called John who happens to enjoy the great outdoors, particularly gold panning holidays in the Rockies. Bearing in mind that you are allowed to bend the truth on these occasions, we could relate a tale about gold panning using a non-stick frying pan (possibly taking in the Groom's cooking ability at the same time).

Example 2

Refer to the trusty rhyming dictionary. As Christian names are not generally in the index we need to look up a word that "John" rhymes with, such as "on".

Scanning through the rhymes for "on" and pulling out relevant ones could easily lead to the following; "Ladies and gentlemen, following (my story about gold panning etc) I'd like to re-mane John as Teflon John from the Yukon."

A similar process leads to:

No sleeve Steve from Tel Aviv - useful for a vest-wearing kibbutz-visiter.

Bonehead Fred from Birkenhead - for a scouser who keeps his hair cropped

Etc etc

I hope you get the idea. Investigate the names of all the relevant wedding participants: the Bride and Groom's Christian and surnames and their nicknames, their home towns and their jobs etc. You may come up with an absolute corker.

Acronyms

Moving on to acronyms, I suppose the first thing for me to do is define what an acronym is. It's a word or phrase the letters of which each stand for another word.

Eg: DIY - Do It Yourself. Incidentally, I don't do DIY, I do GMI - Get Men In. Which is both a rhyme and and acronym. More examples:

GOLFER - Groing Old Looking For Early Retirement
LOMBARD - Lots Of Money But A Right Dipstick

Once again, brainstorming is the starting point. Fill a page or two with notes about the couple - names, interests, personal histories. Spend some time creating acronyms from them. Here are a few to start you off:

• WOOF - Well Off Older Folk (good if either the bride or groom has a dog)
• SITCOM - Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage
• HUSBAND - Huge Ugly Squat Bogeyman Acquires Nubile Damsel
• BRIDE - Best Ruddy Idea Dave'S Envisaged
• TAFFY - Totally Affable Financially Fantastic Yuppie
• BRUMMIE - Big Robust Unassuming Midland Man Into Escapology (useful if Groom has a history of being locked in places)
• JOCK - Jolly Old Can Of Kippers
• GROOM - Grimy Richard Organises Opportunistic Marriage

I should say that your acronym or rhyme needs to say something about the Bride or Groom which echoes what you are saying about them anyway - repeating again or adding to it in a witty way. Repetition of a theme can be very funny.

For example, after relating a story about the Groom being locked in a department store loo for 3 hours before breaking out, you can say (if he's a Brummie):

"And so you see it's true that Tom is a true Brummie, by which I mean that he is a big robust unassuming midland man into escapology."

I wish you well in your voyage of joke discovery and know that if you have bought a Fine Speeches pack and applied my tips you will be well on the way to success on the Big Day.