Marr’s after-dinner speech bombs

Andrew Marr, the former BBC political editor who now has his own Sunday morning TV show and hosts Radio 4's Start the Week among other Beeb duties, has taken up after-dinner speaking - and it's not a good idea, if his performance at the CBI conference last week is anything to go by. Have you heard the story about the former Labour Minister George Brown who was so drunk he asked a Papal Legate for a dance? Of course you have.

Or the one about the the Scottish politician visiting a hospital? Every time he pauses to ask a patient how they're doing, he gets a line of poetry recited to him, such as "Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious...". Matron explains to the puzzled politician: This is the Burns unit. Boom boom.
 
In other words, a couple of jokes so old that they have whiskers on them - but not too old for Marr to use at the CBI. The verdict, according to one who witnessed the performance, is that Marr bombed and won't be re-booked.

Marr likes to earn a little something on the side to supplement his BBC salary. He used to write a much-admired weekly column for the Daily Telegraph until post-Hutton rules banned him and other BBC stars, including John Humphrys, from writing political pieces for the newspapers. ·