Latest news with #MyFairLady
South Wales Argus
a day ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Caerleon's Arts Festival celebrates its 23rd year in 2025
The festival runs form July 3 to July 13. Actor Joe Rooney, who played Father Damian in the priest parody, will present a Father Ted celebration at St Cadoc's Church on Monday, July 7. William Byrne, one of the festival's organisers, says the festival can only grow and help boost culture in south Wales. The festival is now in its 23rd year. Father Ted, a much-loved comedy show is famous for lampooning priests and the Catholic Church. A callow youth, Fr Damian is something of a parody of the Catholic patron saint of Lepers. Rather than avoiding life outside of holy orders, Fr Damian is a fashion-obsessed, shallow and naïve young man who has delusions of coolness. Father Ted was one of the biggest sitcoms of the 1990s. Other attractions at the festival include From Page to Stage, with various performers reprising musicals that were inspired by literature. The celebrations will include performances from Westside Story, My Fair Lady and Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera. The musical tributes will also be held at St Cadoc's Church. West Side Story is based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Les Miserable is based on Victor Hugo's book of the same name, My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and Phantom of the Opera is based on Gaston Leroux's novel of the same name. There will be all genres of music from jazz and rock to male voice choirs. There will also be comedy, musicals and chats with local authors. Male voice choir and Shakespeare performances will be held at the Amphitheatre. Other venues include local pubs such as The Hanbury Arms. Events and ticketing information can be found at Caerleon Festival or From Page to Stage - Caerleon Festival
Evening Standard
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Cecil Beaton's Garden Party at the The Garden Museum review: a chance to wallow in Beaton's charm and gaiety
This little show is his life told through flowers. There's a fabulous photo of Rex Whistler at the outset, reclining with a mandolin and knee breeches, which sets the tone. Then there's his early life, taking pictures of his mother and sisters in the gardens; an account of his years at Ashcombe; his royal photography - and clever Cecil managed simultaneously to keep Wallis Simpson and Queen Elizabeth onside in 1937, making the latter look less dumpy than ethereal in the garden with a parasol. There are his opera and ballet sets, including a model for the stage for Turandot (we are reminded that his war work including a stint in the Far East which he put to use artistically) and there are some of his costume designs for My Fair Lady – plus the Oscar statuette he got for his costume work on the film. There are some charming letters to him from his gardener, letting him know how the prized delphiniums were getting on.
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
What happened to the original stars of Faking It: A vicar became a car salesman and a lawyer trained as an MC in the cult noughties reality show
From a Cambridge-educated lawyer who became a garage MC to a naval officer who transformed into a drag queen, the cast of the cult reality show Faking It went through some incredible professional about-turns. Aired from 2000 to 2006 on Channel 4, the six series saw people live and train with an expert in a completely different field - before competing against other experts in front of a panel of judges, who had to guess the 'faker'. It was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, perhaps better known as its 1964 film adaptation My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn, about a Cockney flower seller trained to pass as a duchess. And like Gogglebox, Race Across The World and The Traitors, also from production company Studio Lambert, Faking It was not just entertaining - but thoughtfully explored ideas of similarity and difference across British cultural divides. Now the show has been rebooted on Channel 5, with the first episode airing on Tuesday, long-time fans of the show might be wondering what happened to the original cast: did they stick to their old lives or leave them far behind? From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. But he eventually won the day, convincing two out of three experts on the final judging panel he was the real deal George Lubega - lawyer to garage MC In episode four of series four of Faking It, released in October 2002, Cambridge-educated lawyer George Lubega swapped his suit for a mic to train as a garage MC. After four weeks of tutelage by MC Creed and Pay As You Go, the dispute resolution assistant at prestigious City firm Freshfield faced his biggest trial yet - by a jury of garage MC experts and ravers. At the start of the episode, the suited and booted solicitor explained his lack of knowledge, saying: 'An MC is somebody who gets the crowd going effectively. 'But I don't know much more than that. Is it, is it somebody who raps and... is that right?' His friends did not initially have much confidence in him either, with a fellow lawyer joking: 'Singing, dance, good fashion sense - you haven't got any of that.' But George got stuck in, taking on dance classes, rhyming and lyric writing workshops, so-called 'reverse elocution lessons' and even a trip to Jamaica. He did admittedly hit a hurdle when he took his new look - a shaved head, baggy trousers, gold jewellery and some new shapes to throw - to the Ministry of Sound club in London, where ravers were less than convinced. But he eventually won the day, convincing two out of three experts on the final judging panel he was the real deal. George told the Law Gazette shortly after competing that his legal skills helped him identify his mistakes and correct them systematically - but he had no plans to leave the courtroom. He said at the time: 'I've had a couple of offers to do personal appearances but I could hardly claim to be a talented MC.' And indeed, since appearing on Faking It, George has continued to fly as a successful lawyer. A year after the show, he moved on to Pinsent Masons in 2003, before becoming partner in 2005. He later became partner at Nabarro, heading up its Sheffield and Manchester commercial litigation teams as of 2021, after the firm merged with two others in 2017 - which saw a large portion of his work take place in the High Court. He was also appointed an adjudicator for the Traffic Penalty Tribunal in 2013 - before taking on his biggest role to date in 2023, as a District Judge, based in Derby. His MC mentor Creed has also since spoken out about the enjoyable filming experience, telling the Telegraph in 2020 about a particularly memorable moment when George's dance coach got him to try out some attitude out on the street. MC Creed posted a throwback Facebook post in 2020 about their time on the show: 'We spoke for a little while after the experience but I don't think knocking about with us dodgy characters was gonna help his legal career so we eventually lost contact' 'He walked up to [some men on the street] and said, "Yeah, mate, do you know where this street is?". 'They told him and then he walked the opposite way from what he said.' He also posted a throwback Facebook post in 2020 about their time on the show, saying: 'We spoke for a little while after the experience but I don't think knocking about with us dodgy characters was gonna help his legal career so we eventually lost contact.' Gavin Freeborn - sheep farmer to hairdresser Another episode, from November 2001, followed country boy Gavin Freeborn, then 22, who was born and bred on his father's farm in County Donegal in Ireland. He swapped his sheep shearers for a pair of clippers as he made the journey to London, where his challenge was to pass as an up-and-coming hairdresser. Gavin was trained up by Scottish celebrity hairdresser Trevor Sorbie, assisted by rising star stylist Zoe Irwin - who admitted squeezing a three-year hairdressing course into four weeks was 'pretty ambitious'. Though the Irish sheep farmer gave it his best shot, he sadly failed the final test. But it was not the end of Gavin's life transformation - as his career went on to look markedly different to his young adult life spent in the barn. He had confessed while on Faking It that his dream was to become a photographer - which he eventually started doing in around 2005, four years after the show aired. Since then, he has embarked on a range of photography projects, including more traditional wedding, events and portrait shoots as well as his less conventional so-called Freeborn Exchange project. Starting in 2011, it saw him travel to around 20 countries, taking portrait photographs of people he met in exchange for food, hospitality, skills or objects - and become an exhibited artist. Not only that, he gave a high-profile Ted talk about the endeavour, 'hoping to inspire others to explore their potential alternative currency in everyday life'. Gavin is also now a qualified yoga and meditation teacher, having trained in the Indian city of Rishikesh. Over the years, he has also taken on various university administration roles, including managing cultural partnerships at Leeds Beckett University, such as with Northern Ballet Theatre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. He worked in marketing and communications at the University of the Arts London, based out of Chelsea College of Arts - where he also taught social media part-time. He now works in research communications at the University of Liverpool. Nigel Done - vicar to car dealer Wheeler dealing and the priesthood might not be thought to be compatible professions. But the Reverend Nigel Done found it to be enlightening when he traded in his sleepy Somerset parish for working at a car dealership in Southend-on-Sea, Essex. He told the Telegraph five years ago: 'I realised, in trying to fake it as a car dealer, that I'd already begun to fake it as a vicar. 'I had taken on some of the norms of what a vicar was like and had become a bit of a young fogey. 'I realised I didn't want to do that and that I'd go back with freedom and self-confidence.' He was pretty successful too - two judges believed his smooth-talking act, while two others were not fooled. When one of the judges who bought Nigel's act was told his real profession by the crew, he said, astounded: 'Really? He's a Somerset vicar? 'Well, I can't believe that, I can't believe that. If I hadn't known he was a vicar, yeah, we would have offered him a job! I'm going to go and eat my hat now.' Despite his success, Nigel did not give up his dog collar. He eventually left the parish he worked for at the time of the show, in the village of Croscombe, Somerset, for the Minster in nearby town Ilminster in 2012. Nigel moved into a senior role in the diocese of Salisbury in 2018, to guide those exploring the idea of ordination and ministry, which he still has now. He is also a keen painter, having created and gifted two abstract paintings to Salisbury theological institution Sarum College in 2022. In a forgotten early job before he shot to fame, now BBC presenter - then wheeler dealer - Dominic Littlewood was charged with training Nigel up in the episode from 2001. He has since become known for his journalistic and presenting work on consumer protection, on programmes like Fake Britain and Cowboy Builders. Chris Sweeney - punk rocker to conductor Along with George's turn as an MC, series four, released in 2002, also saw punk rocker Chris Sweeney pick up a conducting baton - and head up the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Internationally renowned professional conductors Nicholas Kraemer and Richard Dickins joined forces to train up the lead singer of band The Dead Pets. Asked at the start of the episode what he knew about classical music, Chris, boasting a red mohawk, laughed: 'Nothing at all! I know... I've seen Amadeus.' And as to whether he read music, he joked: 'No! I don't even read.' Before they embarked on the challenge, Nicholas predicted somewhat wryly: 'This is going to be the biggest success story there's ever been in music.' But head banger Chris did seriously well and - in a circular moment, after admitting the Mozart biopic was his only classical experience - was even offered a spot on a trainee conductor scheme by the amateur Amadeus Orchestra. His mentor Nicholas told the Manchester Evening News in 2004 he remembered very fondly the three weeks the young rocker spent training at his London family home. Chris was a hit with Nicholas' four children, who at one point in the episode played the Rossini piece the punk had chosen, so he could practise conducting it. The judges did eventually identify Chris as the newbie - because, he has since said, a musician in an orchestra he had practised with was a relative of one of the eventual judges, and let them in on the secret so they knew who to choose. But despite this, Nicholas said he thought his student did extraordinarily well - and two of the judges even listed him as their favourite conductor of the competition. But head banger Chris did seriously well and - in a circular moment, after admitting the Mozart biopic was his only classical experience - was even offered a spot on a trainee conductor scheme by the amateur Amadeus Orchestra Chris is now a graphic designer and carpenter, working on scenery, props, signage and marketing, and living in the USA. Alongside working in various theme parks and theatres, one of his biggest jobs has been his work at Walt Disney World and Epcot. He now provides all his creative services via his own company Pop Media, which he has run since 2010. Despite him choosing not to pursue music, Chris told the Telegraph in 2020 his appearance on the programme changed his life: 'Previously, I had always thought it was us and them, rich and poor. 'This gave me something most people don't have. I no longer walked into rooms intimidated. I'd walk in like, "Well, have you conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra?".' Spence Bowdler - naval officer to drag queen Another episode of the show featured Chief Petty Officer Spencer Bowdler, who had freshly left the navy after winning medals for his service in Bosnia and the Gulf, the Guardian reports. Spencer said he chose to undergo the transformation into a drag queen - using the name Britney Ferry - because he liked a challenge. But even so, he admitted he was nervous, which was immediately visible when his mentor, veteran performer Dave Lynn, took him to his first ever gay bar as part of his training. He soon rallied, though, undergoing a body wax and putting on a 'restraint gusset' before taking to the stage to perform a confident rendition of Ride Sally Ride in a sparkly orange dress The naval officer soon threw himself right in though, even taking singing lessons from singing teacher Robert Bicknell - who has trained stars like Natalie Imbruglia. The instructor tried to meet Spencer where he was at, creating the tongue twister warm-up phrase: 'Kickable penalty.' Faced with donning a frock for the first time, he nearly backed down, with the cameras briefly stopping rolling. He soon rallied, though, undergoing a body wax and putting on a 'restraint gusset' before taking to the stage to perform a confident rendition of Ride Sally Ride in a sparkly orange dress. And not a single one of the judges suspected he was faking it, with one saying upon Spencer's identity being revealed: 'No! Well done. Now, that's amazing. My career's in tatters.' Both the apprentice and the teacher seemed to get a lot out of the experience, learning from each other - and closed out the episode with a chummy duet of Stand By Your Man. Having already left the navy after a decade in service when the show aired, Spencer soon changed directions career-wise, developing expertise in security, crisis and incident management and operations. He has provided expertise at high-profile events such as the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the 2015 Rugby World Cup and 2022's Commonwealth Games in Birmingham - and for big brands like EDF Energy and Heathrow Airport. In one case, his work has even taken him abroad, to Djibouti in east Africa. Spencer now works for the Sizewell C nuclear power station project. Scottish physics student Kevin McMahon featured on Faking It in 2005 - and it changed his life forever. After appearing on the show, where he was tasked with transforming into a magician, he threw in the towel on his PhD research at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University - to pursue a career in magic. Performing magic tricks had been a long-time interest of Kevin, who had enjoyed fooling his siblings with a set he received when he was around ten years old. Later forgotten amid his burgeoning interest in physics and maths, it was only when he featured on the Channel 4 reality show that he remembered his true passion. On the judging panel of experts he had to convince was TV magician Paul Daniels - whose very magic set had first inspired Kevin all those years ago. Despite other panellists spotting him ('I was woefully underprepared', Kevin later told the BBC), he managed to fool Paul - which he said felt like the true win: 'It was pretty euphoric. Later forgotten amid his burgeoning interest in physics and maths, it was only when he featured on the Channel 4 reality show that he remembered his true passion 'I was jumping about with an expensive suit on, paid for by the production company, throwing champagne around.' After filming finished, Kevin had every intention of finishing his PhD - but it occurred to him shortly after he could attempt a career in magic. There was just the small matter of telling his parents: 'When you're already a scientist, it's the equivalent of running away to join the circus.' He gave himself a year to make it happen - and he did, by the end of 2007, styling himself as Kevin Quantum, incorporating scientific elements into his tricks. Since then, he has toured internationally, performed regularly at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, broken Guinness World Records - and even made it to the Britain's Got Talent semi-final in 2020. He said the production company of BGT had been asking him to appear on the show for years but he had always resisted, thinking magicians do not tend to 'come across well' on the show. But he did incredibly well, making it to the final stages: 'BGT was a bit of a dream.' Kevin now also has a magicians' member organisation, The Magic Circle, which mentors aspiring tricksters, and started a convention called MagicFest with his wife in 2010, which runs annually in Edinburgh. As David Walliams described him on BGT: 'A mixture of science, magic and derring-do, you're like a sexy Doctor Who.'
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I had the audacity not to peg it!' Timothy Spall on cancer, cosy crime and being heckled on the red carpet
Some like it hot, and Timothy Spall is among them. 'Can I have an extra-large skinny cappuccino, absolutely boiling?' he asks the server from his seat at a pavement cafe. 'The largest and hottest you've got. Illegally hot.' Once we are alone again, Spall returns to what he was in the middle of discussing: 18th-century coffee-houses. 'What they served didn't taste like coffee. It was repulsive. I looked it up.' His curiosity is innate and all-consuming. When he was 16 and starring in a school production of My Fair Lady, he took it upon himself to visit the tenements on Tottenham Court Road in London where his character would have lived. At an even younger age, he secretly imitated the stooped walk of a stranger he spotted in the street. Not to be cruel. 'I just wanted to know what it was to walk like that. How it felt inside. I still find myself doing it now. I'll see somebody moving a certain way and I'll try and copy that to feel where it comes from. I suppose that's why I do what I do.' As he talks in his fascinated way, the low-speed London traffic trundles past and the morning sun blazes through the canopy of trees above us. It all feels rather like being on holiday, and Spall is dressed for the part: untucked white shirt, cobalt blue jacket, loose striped linen trousers. 'I'm partial to a stripe,' he says, admiring a leg and turning a Chelsea-booted foot this way and that. 'I bought these in a shopping centre on the Strait of Messina. I just hope it doesn't look like I shat myself then knocked on someone's door to borrow their pyjamas.' At 68, the Battersea-born actor has played sad-sack taxi drivers and world-class painters. He has been a Death Eater in the Harry Potter films, Britain's last hangman, Ian Paisley and Winston Churchill (twice in fact, as well as publicly reading Churchill's VE Day radio address earlier this month), as well as Santa Claus and even Margaret Rutherford. Some of his most exceptional work was seen recently on television: as a bewildered Duke of Norfolk in Wolf Hall, and the university lecturer Peter Farquhar, tormented and murdered by the young man with whom he believed he had found love, in The Sixth Commandment. That performance, which won Spall a Bafta and an International Emmy, amounts to a moving reclamation of a man who could have been seen as a victim but was instead rendered noble and even inspiring because of his ingenuous faith in love – and the actor's skill in embodying that quality. What could be left for Spall to play? One answer is: a lovable old ham who fancies that his former role as a TV detective has imbued him with the skills to solve crimes. What's more, he turns out to be not entirely deluded. This is the BBC's new 'cosy crime' series Death Valley, its title flagging both the show's carousel of murders and its Vale of Glamorgan setting. Spall is John Chapel, an actor dimly remembered for playing the Maigret-like TV sleuth Caesar, who came complete with his own cheesier-than-Caerphilly catchphrase: 'Crime waits for no man.' Chapel's glory days are behind him. But when DS Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) – who is also a Caesar fangirl – knocks on his door during a routine appeal for witnesses to a murder, he brings his thespian training ('Character is action!') to the investigation and helps Janie find the guilty party. It turns out that years of fathoming the behaviour of fictional characters has left him with some practical crime-fighting skills. The opening episode even gives Chapel a Poirot-esque revelation scene in which he reveals whodunnit and why to the gobsmacked suspects – in between posing for selfies. That success, and his rapport with Mallowan, leads him to be a regular source of counsel on her subsequent cases. The generation-gap dynamic isn't unprecedented: Only Murders in the Building features a young woman sleuthing with two luvvies, one of whom also made his name as a fictional TV detective. But Death Valley has a wryly parochial strain of humour. (Accused of being a hermit, Chapel protests: 'I'm not a hermit. I went to Swansea last month!') The show also gets a lot of mileage out of fusing buddy-comedy conventions with a weekly whodunnit and an affectionate ribbing of its thespian hero, who in one episode turns up as Claudius in an am-dram Hamlet. As a seasoned pro himself, Spall helped develop the character. 'I lampooned some aspects of acting and brought in some of the pretensions, the whole arse-ache embarrassment quality, but also the sincerity.' Bad behaviour among actors isn't as common as people assume, he says. 'The show is playing, coquettishly I suppose, with people's preconceptions. But I've seen remarkably few displays of egotism in real life. We all just want to be brilliant, we're all shitting ourselves and none of us want to look like twats. You want to give good value for money.' This is an idea to which he often returns. 'As I've got older, I've realised that you've got to do it for the audience. It's our duty to give value for money. Stories can just be entertainment but they can also mean something.' Death Valley falls into this category. 'It's lovely, isn't it?' he says in between sips of his cappuccino. 'Me, I always want the darkness. I try to turn everything into a Lithuanian art movie. And it's not that, is it?' Not by a long chalk. The epitome of sparkling Sunday evening entertainment, Death Valley has even been bumped to BBC One from its intended home on BBC Two. 'I had a feeling that might happen when we dropped the fruity language,' he confides. Of course, Spall has been in plenty of art movies, if not Lithuanian ones. Among his earlier film roles was an overgrown mummy's boy in Bernardo Bertolucci's majestic and desolate The Sheltering Sky. 'Fourteen-hour trips across the Atlas Mountains,' he marvels. 'Debra Winger, John Malkovich. My first scene was in a souk. Character names on the backs of the canvas chairs. I remember going: 'Fucking hell, I'm in the movies!' Then doing a scene with Debra and being so nervous and Bernardo saying afterwards: 'Bellissimo.' I'm thinking: 'This is all right. I'll remember this.'' He snorts at his younger self. 'You're the first person I've told.' That African adventure came six or seven years after Spall had experienced overnight fame in his mid-20s as the droning Black Country electrician Barry in the ITV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. That was a hit in 1983, the year his actor son Rafe (the middle child of three) was born. Although Spall has never had a Caesar-style albatross of a role – he once turned down a TV detective series that felt too close to Robbie Coltrane's Cracker – it is Barry, if anyone, who follows him around. 'It disappeared for a while but then it was constantly on Dave or Bob or Colin. One of those channels.' Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion The year before Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Spall fell into the orbit of the director Mike Leigh, known for building his comic portraits of quotidian British life from a lengthy improvisation process. In Leigh's TV play Home Sweet Home, Spall played a postal worker (coincidentally his father's occupation). He was soon one of the film-maker's most cherished collaborators, and won the best actor prize at the Cannes film festival for his visceral performance as JMW Turner, painting and grunting and rutting away, in Mr Turner. (Spall later became a painter himself.) He was in his tuxedo on the red carpet for the Cannes premiere, flashbulbs popping away, crowds cheering. 'I'm thinking: 'Cannes, eh? This is the life.'' Then a lone, loud voice called out in an exaggerated Black Country accent: 'All right, Barry?' Laughing now, Spall shakes his head. 'I was straight back down to earth. You just go: 'Fair enough.'' It is Leigh's Secrets & Lies, in which he played a patient but put-upon high-street photographer, that has an enduring place in his heart. While the film was scooping the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1996, Spall was in hospital with acute myeloid leukaemia. The movie became both a showcase for him and a placeholder while he was out of action. 'I was in bed, hooked up to this electric soup, all these brilliant people trying to save my life, and wondering whether I was going to make it or not. As that was happening, Secrets & Lies was out there. And when I had the audacity not to peg it, I came back and found I had a film career!' Not half. He enjoyed a Hollywood spell, working alongside Amy Adams (Enchanted), Tom Cruise (Vanilla Sky, The Last Samurai) and Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd). One of his proudest recent experiences was playing the Queen's equerry, opposite Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, in the pleasingly bananas biopic Spencer. Perhaps it is Spencer from which a passing stranger, somewhat the worse for wear, recognises him this morning. He stops at our table, waggles a thumbs-up in Spall's face, and bellows: 'Famous!' The actor knows how to handle this. ''Allo mate,' he replies affably, then watches the interloper stagger off into the distance. Once he is out of earshot, Spall mutters: 'Cor, he's lived a life.' The words are tinged with wonder and concern. You can sense him logging the details for later. He'll be doing that stagger on his walk home for sure. Death Valley begins Sunday, 8.15pm, BBC One.
Forbes
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Change Is Possible - If You Work At It Diligently
One of the most frequent observations made about presentations and speeches is that good speakers are born not made. The underlying implication of this view is that change is impossible. Put another way, nature nullifies nurture. Unlock potential of business success stairs dart and dartboard targets magnifying glass with hand on ... More gray background. Explore opportunities growth embrace steps to achieve ambitions and goal concept. The latest instance of this belief comes from Jason Gay, the Wall Street Journal's sports columnist who was invited to deliver a commencement address at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gay's immediate reaction was 'I'm not worthy.' He went on to add that some people 'are born to do this. I am not. I'm a bit of an introvert, happiest behind a keyboard. My greatest fear is a room full of strangers. My second greatest fear is another room full of strangers.' Sound familiar? Gay's plaint is a variation of the good speakers are born belief. But he didn't stop there. 'I buckled down. I prepared,' he said. The result: 'I think it went all right. Feedback's been positive.' Gay's case demonstrates that change is possible and there is overwhelming evidence to prove it: from the baseball players who go from the minor leagues to the majors, performers who go from understudy to star, or from Off-Broadway to Broadway. They are all tales about the ugly duckling who becomes a beautiful swan, and Cinderella who becomes a Princess. Of course, there is the classic 'My Fair Lady,' one the most successful Broadway musicals and films ever created. The show tells the story of how a lowly Cockney flower girl is accepted as royalty by improving her manner of speech with the help of a speech teacher. One of the songs in the show is 'Just You Wait,' which includes the passage: 'Next week on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day!' So, in honor of Eliza Doolittle—and Jason Gay—make this the day you change. Gay said that he was able to change by reading other commencement speeches, soliciting advice from colleagues, writing multiple drafts, and practicing aloud 'maybe 30 times.' To demonstrate the power of practice, let me share a personal example. I have been a presentation coach for over three decades and I deliver my coaching sessions without any practice. However, from time to time, I am invited to give a presentation about giving a presentation. Because the material for such a presentation is drawn from my recurring programs, I don't have to go through all the steps Jason Gay did for his unique event. But I do write multiple drafts and I do practice aloud—multiple times. I broke the practice routine for one of those unique events and paid the price. I was scheduled to deliver a new presentation at a conference in Napa, a two-hour drive from my home base in Silicon Valley. It was a particularly busy time and I couldn't practice as much as usual, but planned to do so during the long drive north. However, another urgent matter arose that required my spending the drive time on the phone. The result: I stumbled frequently during the speech. Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach once said, 'Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.' So change is possible. It just takes time and effort. Take the advice of Sir Winston Churchill, one of the greatest orators of all time, who said in one of his speeches: 'To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.'
