If I could say a few words… I’d be a better public speaker

I’ll keep it brief.

Eighteen minutes. Slightly shorter if you were watching in China. That’s pretty sprightly. Even at that length, I was half expecting President Obama to whip out a Blackberry and start posting key points on Twitter.

It was certainly short enough for BBC commentators to shoehorn in a reference to the longest presidential inaugural address back in 1841. Before they had Facebook and MTV and shit and presumably when attention spans were longer than – ooo, a big crane! Sorry, where was I?

When William Henry Harrison took to office, he delivered a mighty 8,444 word beast. I’ve read shorter books. In fact, I haven’t read any longer books. It took nearly two hours to get through it, putting even my mum’s one-way telephone conversations to shame.

Legend has it that Harrison’s speech was so long that – stood out on a cold 4th March with no hat or overcoat – that he later contracted pneumonia and died some 30 days later. That’ll learn ‘im.