THE challenge of any event featuring more than one speaker is you are always going to have comparisons made by the audience.
The Lord’s Taverners Balloon Debate takes that a step further in that it has four speakers and the audience has to vote them out over a series of three rounds.
So forget kind words, if you are turfed out having only spoken for six minutes in the first round, it feels like a raw deal.
Between them, Paul Robin, chief executive of the Lord’s Taverners and Alan Wright, chairman of the Tavs Regions and Nations committee, have seen more than a dozen Balloon Debates overs the years.
So when both agreed that the Yorkshire Region Lord’s Taverners Balloon Debate had the four best speakers they had ever seen together, that was high praise indeed.
It also raised around £8,500 for the great work done by the Tavs charity for disadvantaged and disabled children and a great first event for new chairman Jeremy Thomas.
The event was sponsored by Henderson Insurance Brokers, Yorkshire Bank and Deloitte.
Having achieved virtually everything they could in their chosen sports, Phillip DeFreitas and Kevin Sinfield came with sporting CVs that are second to none.
Add in the fact that both are thoroughly nice guys with plenty of humility and they both have a great speaking style and you perhaps wouldn’t have held a candle to the chances of the other two speakers, highly successful but relatively unknown blind amateur footballer and banker David Clarke and Yorkshire and former England cricket physiotherapist Wayne Morton.
Most viewed the latter pair as lambs to the slaughter: a couple of added extras to make up the numbers alongside the sporting greats.
But the beauty of the Balloon Debate is that it is a great leveller. The audience are always impressed by reputation, but when they vote they do so thinking very much of the speaker that has entertained them the most and they want to hear more of.
And so it was that at the fifth annual Balloon Debate on Wednesday evening at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, Phillip DeFreitas, speaking about his sporting hero and former international room-mate, Sir Ian Botham, saw his hero ejected from the balloon after the first round.
Kevin Sinfield, whose hero was his former team-mate Jamie Jones-Buchanan (who interestingly chose Kevin when he took part last year) fell in the next round, both sporting greats victims of the talents of David Clarke and Wayne Morton, two extremely funny, self-deprecating speakers who are both lovely men too.
I’d actually had a problem persuading Wayne to take part. He said he was embarrassed to stand up alongside men who had achieved so much when he was a mere physio.
But I’d heard his modesty belied a dry wit and punchy delivery that always works well with audiences.
“Do you think this audience would mind the odd, mild swear word?” Wayne asked me before taking the stage.
As he warmed to his task – telling stories about his sporting hero, former Yorkshire and England fast bowler and Strictly Come Dancing star Darren Gough – the language became choicer and the laughs louder.
“Some people have described Goughie as thick, I prefer to think of him as ‘uncomplicated’”, explained Wayne.
All four balloonists got on really well from the start and when Daffy was ejected from the debate, Wayne was quick to mention his time playing for Lancashire – to a big cheer from the audience.
He told Kevin Sinfield that he had also had a glittering career in rugby league and once played in an 84-point thriller for Carlisle.
“The score that day was the opposition 84, Carlisle nil,” deadpanned Wayne.
David Clarke was accompanied by his 45kg Alsatian guide dog, Dennis.
“Bloody hell, how hard must he be if his guide dog’s an Alsatian?” said Wayne.
“Actually, did they tell you your guide dog is an Alsatian?” he asked David, to great laughter.
The jokes about David’s blindness only started after he took to the stage and then told the hushed audience: “I had an all-singing, all-dancing Powerpoint presentation for you tonight, but then I thought, if I can’t see it then why the hell should they?”
His sporting hero was David Beckham. “I have met him a few times and I can tell you, he smells lovely,” David informed the audience.
He said Beckham is one of the nicest people you can meet and a huge supporter of blind football.
David Clarke was invited to Beckham’s home in Spain when he was playing for Real Madrid.
“Victoria came into the room to meet me…I’m sure she was wearing her neglige,” he said.
He was also flown to Los Angeles to be part of a film produced by the BBC and featuring Beckham.
Quite frankly, David Clarke’s footballing CV stands up well against that of his hero.
At the same time as forging a very successful career in the banking sector, David Clarke became one of Britain’s most successful blind footballers representing Great Britain and England’s blind football team 144 times scoring a record 128 goals.
Some of his best goals are well worth watching on YouTube.
He was the stadium torch bearer at the 2012 London Paralympics.
David is currently Head of Customer Banking for Clydesdale/Yorkshire Bank in London and the South East and is an inductee to the National Football Museum’s Hall of Fame alongside Peter Schmeichel and Matt le Tissier, Sir Alex Ferguson, Gordon Banks and Jimmy Greaves.
In the final round David and Wayne spoke for two minutes each and then the audience voted for the winner.
Wayne won with around two thirds of the vote but I said: “David, it’s close, there are about three votes in it.”
Fortunately he laughed and kept Dennis on his lead.
Which ensured my new made-to-measure suit from Michelsberg Tailoring remained intact.
:::
FAREWELL then Rhodri Morgan.
The former Welsh Assembly leader died this week at the age of 77.
You may have never heard of him, but he gave the fledgling devolved parliament in the Principality credibility and his voice was one of reason, sanity and sometimes eccentricity during the antiseptic era of Tony Blair’s New Labour.
I spent a very entertaining evening with Rhodri in a North London curry house in 1999 when he was running for the leadership of the new Welsh Assembly.
I was London Editor of Welsh national paper the Western Mail and the paper’s political editor said he was off for dinner with Rhodri, then a Labour MP, and suggested I should join them as I would enjoy the experience.
I immediately warmed to this wild-haired bear of a man who had a wealth of stories and views, mostly not about politics.
He was like a socialist version of Boris Johnson – highly intelligent but not afraid to be himself and tear up the carefully crafted political script.
It made Rhodri one of the most quotable politicians.
In 1998, he appeared on BBC’s Newsnight and when asked by Jeremy Paxman if he wanted to be first minister, Mr Morgan replied: “Do one-legged ducks swim in a circle?” It prompted a bemused Paxman to ask: “Is that Welsh for yes?”
Rhodri lost out in his two early bids to become First Minister in Wales. He was viewed as such an uncontrollable figure by Tony Blair that the then Prime Minister told Home Office minister Alun Michael to resign his post to contest the first devolved elections in Wales.
On finally getting the job of first minister nine months later in February 2000, Rhodri Morgan said: “I’m going to uncork the Welsh champagne bottle and let it fizz.”
In 2003, Mr Morgan took Conservative assembly member Jonathan Morgan to task after he criticised the quality of assembly debates, saying: “It’s like a child shooting both its parents and then complaining about the food in the orphanage.”
And on the Conservatives, he once quipped: “The Tories’ relationship with Wales is based on trust and understanding. We don’t trust them and they don’t understand us.”
Given the current sanitised general election campaign, we can ill afford to lose politicians with the wit, talent and individuality of Rhodri Morgan.
:::
This blog returns in early June as I’m off on holiday next week for two weeks.
And before you start, I can’t remember the last time I had a fortnight’s holiday.
I’m worth it.
Well, that’s what my therapist tells me to say.
Have a great weekend.