When some weeks ago I posted a critique of a speech by Stephen Emmott I quoted someone as having declared him to be the worst public speaker in the world. I was nevertheless careful – though I wasn’t desperately kind about his speaking ability – to avoid adding my voice to that claim.  Here is the reason. I’ve been sitting on this for more than a year, not knowing whether I dared expose it to the light of day.

We have previously looked at speeches made at an EU innovation convention in Brussels in 2011. One was from Michael O’Leary, another from Richard Dawkins. At that same convention was this offering from Vivienne Westwood.

It is tempting, rather than being constructive, merely to award points for every minute anyone can stand to watch this. I win!  Being built of stern stuff I’ve watched it all, several times. Perhaps its most significant moment comes at 4:30, when she says “where am I?”.

The fashion business is tough. Vivienne Westwood made it to the top of the industry forty years ago, and has stayed there. Westwood is tough. She displays remarkable chutzpah, wandering out onto that stage and embarking on this stream of aimlessly meandering consciousness.

Readers of this blog will have gathered that I favour ‘shooting from the hip’, speaking without script or notes, but the practice does require some underpinning. I teach trainees about structures, how to create them and how to use them, so that shooting from the hip becomes at least as secure as reading from a script and a hell of a lot more interesting for the audience. The only thing that Westwood essentially lacks is that knowledge and skill. When I train people, I also have to work on their confidence. Westwood already has all the confidence she needs.

She could use some help on what to do with her hands.

Let us not be too hard on her message. In promoting her views on global warming she enthusiastically cites James Lovelock, rating him alongside Einstein. Remember that this speech – in 2011 – was made before Lovelock retracted a great deal of what he had previously been preaching. It was before the UK Met Office admitted that there had been no global warming in more than fifteen years. She was being one of the helpful innocents that supported the scare. A lot of people were taken in at the time. Also, making the speech as badly as this, her helpfulness to that baseless cause was somewhat limited.

That brings me back to my main theme. She sorely needs help, which actually would not be at all difficult to provide. She could very easily be taught to speak better than most of those who have been featured on this blog. Her main ally is her chutzpah!