The Comedy Involved in Writing Speeches

A scribe recalls writing for Prince Charles.

โ€œIn the mid-1970s I began writing speeches for the Prince of Wales.โ€

And thus begins a hilarious and fascinating section of journalist and author Byron Rogersโ€™ superb 2009 memoir Me: The Authorized Biography

Rogersโ€™ engagement as a part-time speechwriter for the heir apparent to the British throne lasted about five years. At the time it began, Rogers was 35 years old, working as a freelance journalist for several London, UK-based publications. His route to Buckingham Palace started with a series of job interviews saturated with traditional British understatement and tact โ€“ such that it wasnโ€™t clear to Rogers until just before the 2nd interview that he was indeed being considered for the position of the Princeโ€™s (occasional) hired pen.

Next came Rogersโ€™ face-to-face interview with Prince Charles. โ€œIt was I who asked the questions,โ€ Rogers writes. โ€œDid [the Prince] see it as a full-time job? No, part-time. Was he looking for a researcher or, I searched for the word, a phrase-maker? A researcher, said the Prince; he would write his own final scripts.โ€ 

The usual awkwardness of a first meeting aside, Rogers soon became the Princeโ€™s speechwriter, and his hiring was widely reported in the British media, along with references to Rogersโ€™ โ€œhumble Welsh origins.โ€

As with any combination of scribe and speaker, the Prince and Rogers took time to establish a rhythm. โ€œAt one point I wrote to the Prince, complaining that I felt like a duck-gun being pointed in an approximate direction in the hope that the scatter pattern might hit something,โ€ Rogers notes. โ€œ[The Prince] wrote back and said that the duck-gun appeared to be working.โ€

โ€œFrom the start,โ€ observes Rogers, โ€œI was aware of the comedy involved in writing speeches to be delivered in places where I had never been, to people I would never meet, about matters of which I knew absolutely nothing. It was worse for my employer who had to go to these places and meet those people. I had been hired, a member of his staff told me, to stop him starting speeches along the lines of โ€˜Ladies and gentlemen, what on earth am I doing here?โ€™ when the ladies and gentlemen knew exactly what he was doing there.โ€

And how did it all end? No final shouting match, no eruption of serious differences between Prince and speechwriter. Nothing as dramatic as that. 

โ€œ[J]ust as in Hollywood,โ€ Rogers writes, โ€œthe phone stopped ringing.โ€ 

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