Speechwriting / must be one of the weirdest jobs in the world. // No matter how carefully the words have been prepared, / you're never quite sure / how they're going to be delivered. / Yesterday I was in London / and I was watching one of my clients, who's a big Australian businessman, / deliver a speech that I'd written for him, and I'd written for him this passage, / kind of with Winston Churchill in mind, / about how we've got to fight for our future, / fight to protect our position, / fight our competitors, / and I'd forgotten about the Australian accent, / and I watched from the back of the room with horror / as I saw him go, / we've got to fart for our future, / fart to protect our position, / and I'll tell you what folks, when I wake up every morning there's one thing I know for sure I'm going to do that day, / fart! // So today I'm going to share with you / some speechwriter / secrets, / because I don't know whether you know this, but there is a secret / language of leadership, / a secret language of leadership that we all used to be taught at school, / ancient rhetoric. / This was a core part of the curriculum in ancient Rome, part of the trivium. / In London, / right the way through to the 19th century, / it was possible to get a free education in rhetoric, but not in mathematics, / reflecting the importance that was placed on the topic. // Today / teaching in rhetoric is restricted, restricted to a powerful privileged few, / so what I'm going to do in my speech is revive this ancient art of rhetoric / and share with you six techniques / so that you can all speak like leaders. // So right, okay, stop, / right, / stop, listen, / look left, / look right, / look centre. // How are you feeling? // Distressed? // Anxious? / A little bit edgy? / That's because I'm mimicking / hyperventilating, / and so this is the authentic sound / of fear, and that fear transfers to you. / This is an ancient Roman rhetorical device, they used to call it a syndeton, / but it's one that leaders still use today, so David Cameron / uses it. // Broken homes, / failing schools, / sink estates. // Tony Blair used to use it as well. // Education, / education, / education. / Barack Obama too. // A world at war, / a planet in peril, / the worst financial crisis / in a generation. / Why three? / Well, three is the magic number / in rhetoric. / Government of the people, / by the people, / for the people. //