An emotional acceptance speech plus Best Pub Quiz winner

After yesterday's shock announcement of the Tachomatic Revmaster in the Best Boat Equipment category, I have received the following acceptance speech from the Revmaster’s creator Mr. Rick Bunnage C. Eng. of long Buckby. Sadly he was not able to attend the presentation in person, or even on video but in true awards ceremony fashion he is clearly overwhelmed with emotion, and quite possibly by drink.

I am so happy to be presented with this prestigious award. It is thoroughly deserved because of all the hard work that I have put in over the years.
But this is not just about me:

I would first of all like to thank my mother who brought me into this world, and taught me that nothing should be wasted – if you have twelve old cookers in the back yard then you can always make one good one from the parts.

I must also thank Mr Wheelwright, my woodwork teacher who taught me the important lesson that you should cut twice then measure once.
And then there is my daughter Vicky who toiled selflessly to find jobs for me in her house so that I could hone my handicraft skills.
(Sob)
And of course, there’s my wife Marilyn who sacrificed her favourite palette knife to provide the material for the Revmaster®.
(Sob)

There is also Peter John Alain del Strother who instilled in me my love of boats, mainly by capsizing his dinghy with me in it.
It is easy to have grand schemes, but not so easy to make every part of them work, so I must thank Martin Bryce for showing me the importance of atenttion to detale.
(Sob Sob)

I must mention two people who sadly I never met, but who had a great influence on my career. The first is James Brindley without whose pioneering work on canals none of this would be possible. The second is Mr Tab Qwerty whose brilliant invention of the keyboard made nbherbie.blogspot.com what it is today.
(Sob Sob Sob)

And last, but by no means least, my heartfelt thanks to Neil and Kath for persisting with me when all was going wrong; and most of all for pretending to enjoy having me on board Herbie when this was obviously not the case.
(Sob Sob Sob Sob)

I love you all.
(Floods of tears, rapturous applause, exit stage left)

Thank you Rick. I will gloss over the fact that the above script is perilously close to a previous speech from the same source used on another occasion, since I accept that it is important these days to recycle as much as possible.

Well, with not  dry eye in the house, we must bravely carry on to open the golden envelope that reveals which pub near the canal put on the best pub quiz this year.  All the contenders are to be congratulated, but our winner this year for originality, atmosphere and a general good night out has to be:

Andy’s Pub Quiz

at

The Wheatsheaf  at Crick

(tumultuous applause)

NB : every Tuesday at 8pm, not Wednesday as I erroneously wrote yesterday.

Tomorrow we move onwards and upwards to list contenders for our Favourite Visitor Mooring of 2015.  A long shortlist perhaps?