I envy you who are about to watch this speech for the first time. You’re not likely to run across it elsewhere, and it took me some hunting to unearth. God knows why because it’s absolutely effing brilliant from start to finish. Phil Collins (not the drummer) was a speechwriter for Tony Blair. He gave this highly entertaining hour-long talk to a London writers’ group called 26 on 16 October 2008. In it, he offers not only candid and hilarious behind-the-scenes tales from No. 10 Downing Street (apparently the prime minister liked to work on his speeches “wearing some combination of boxer shorts, Ugg boots and track suit”) but also glorious tips and insights that can be extrapolated to the creative process generally (“The moment you know you’ve matured as a writer is when you delete a great line because it’s not relevant.”). Humble, eloquent, thoughtful.

Note: some of the best stuff comes in the Q&A, which forms roughly the second half of the video clip.

Annual 26 speech 2008 from Tom Clarkson on Vimeo.

PS Never mind, but at 56:50 of the tape, that’s me in the audience winning a DVD with a smart-ass (but correct) answer to the question who said “History will absolve me”. I was trying to explain that nobody said it, exactly, because it was Fidel Castro who said it and he said it in Spanish (“La historia me absolverá”) in his 4-hour (!) courtroom speech defending himself in the Moncada barracks bombing trial in 1953 . Which I just happened to know because I’m weird.