Fond farewell is simply two emotional

Farewell speeches are a boring yet unavoidable step before clearing out the top draw, pretending not to see fellow employees writing your leaving card and walking out of the office door for the last time with a whoop of joy.

An unfortunate Media Centre leaver, media planner Antony Clifton, must have felt a bit like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day during his farewell party, when a mix-up in speech preparations saw joint managing director Robert Ray mistakenly recite exactly the same 15-minute speech as managing director Jim Marshall had made only minutes before.

Ray suddenly had thoughts of giving up his day job to pursue the stage as a warm-up act for Billy Connelly as colleagues sniggered during the second reading.

“I didn’t realise why it was so funny. I’ve never had such a rapturous response,” says Ray, who was later told of his faux pas while tucking into a bottle of champagne.