575. Alastair Reacts to Burnham’s Speech and Rory’s Viral Stare

You, I, I was there.

It was, it was a very really interesting speech, and I thought very, very powerful.

I mean, it felt incredibly powerful in the, in, in Liverpool, in the hall.

It really felt like the guy was connecting in a way that, um, very few speakers do these days.

And I think partly that was because they really wanted him to do well.

But also it was a, I thought it was a well-crafted speech.

I thought it was well-delivered.

I did think that there was, it was chunky, it was meaty.

Um, and so yeah, I think I counted eleven standing ovations.

And, and before, before we get onto the content, which is obviously what people can, you know, s- see a little bit more of on the BBC, give us a sense of feeling of it.

I mean, watching it on television, it looked like it was very, very, very natural.

I mean, he was walking up and down the stage, but it wasn't sort of stagey.

It, it sounded incredibly sort of relaxed.

It, he managed to almost catch the tone as though he was speaking to a much, much smaller audience, working his thoughts out, when in fact-

Yeah

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he had this enormous call.

Well, it is, it is of, of all the conference venues, I mean, they're all pretty big, but this is, Liverpool is, is big, and it's very wide, and it's quite cavernous.

He didn't have a lectern, and therefore he didn't have a traditional autocue.

I think he had a kind of Ed Sheeran-type autocue somewhere down below.

Um, so he was kind of looking down a fair bit.

But he was very natural.

And also the, there were points of the speech where he allowed the kind of just very, very simple thought or concept just to land.

He, he only got, he really only did the kind of rousing rhetoric when he was either coming to the climax or when the audience were kind of, you know, were getting going as he was speaking.

Now, listen, I've got to say, one of the things I've said, I said this when we did the Becoming Burnham series with Andy, with, uh, Steve Rotherham, the Liverpool mayor.