If you're anything like me, 'best friends' is something you stopped doing in your later teenage years. As the adult world dawned, you began moving in networks: there were pub friends and work friends and gig friends and sport friends and people you'd just known for years, and suddenly 'best friend' was analogue in a digital world.



That was as it should be. But where has your mastery of that adult world taken you? To marriage, which forces you to reverse the whole thing and pick one friend to perform the most intimate and terrifying act in the male repertoire: the best man's speech.

So how do you choose your guy? Well, in theory you have two concerns: picking the right person for you, and picking the right person for the job. Unless you have a single A1 friend who is also an amazing public speaker, it sounds like a tough one.

But theory has no place in weddings – occasions on which, remember, the world goes topsy-turvy enough for women to look genuinely wonderful in head-to-toe white. Despite all the conditioning of adult life, you know who your guy is, and his speaking ability doesn't matter. I know a project manager who proudly used a spreadsheet to plan his big day, and even he didn't think twice about picking his oldest (and by no means most eloquent) friend.

A smart groom lets his gut choose the best man, and uses the rest of his energy to help the poor guy through it. Constant reassurance, rare books on rhetoric, morale-building exercises in karaoke clubs, whatever it takes. Even if it falls flat on the day, you'll have made the right choice – everybody wants the speech to win plaudits, but what good are they if you know the man who should have been speaking was sat on the sidelines nursing a scotch?

Personally, I have no hesitation: my brother, a man skilled with words but capable of succumbing to stage fright in groups of six. He'd write a great speech, spend the best part of a year crippled by fear and only just muddle through the performance, but as the room applauded him I'd know my choice was honest. And if you're not going to be honest on the day you marry, you may as well never bother.

Words Nathan Midgley

Copyright WED magazine 2010