Full Baftas coverage

The Bafta speeches, like all awards ceremonies, present a distinct challenge. The list of people it would be rude not to thank is long. It is also boring. So there is always a temptation to wrap the thanks up in a conceit or send the whole thing up by thanking the Leyton Orient centre forward, as John Cleese once did.

There is a good case for a dull speech, in which the speaker says the relevant thank yous and gets off. But the audience is really there for a Salma Hayek moment or a Gwyneth Paltrow - uncontrollable emotion that manages to belittle the whole process. What we got instead was Jonathan Pryce dressed as an Eskimo, Mickey Rourke speaking in bleeps, Kate Winslet getting away with it, Terry Gilliam less animated than his own work and a miniature classic from Danny Boyle. Boyle grew up about ten miles from Ian McKellen. But unlike the great thespian he has kept the traces of his Lancashire accent. Imagine a spectrum of accents running from Noel Gallagher to Fred Dibnah. Danny Boyle is the man in the middle and he had the most listenable voice on the stage all night.

KATE WINSLET

“Wooo Hoo. OK! Thank you very, very much. To be given this award at home, this really means a great deal to me. Thank you, Bafta. Thank you.”

A shaky start - the shadow of previous disasters is evident here. The sense that we might be heading for a another car crash is amplified by the fact that Winslet is bashing the podium hard with her hand as she speaks, as though she were playing the drum line to No Woman, No Cry. Her hands movements are out of control. Turn the sound down and she looks like she is doing it in semaphore or contemporary dance.

“I want to thank my friends and my family, especially my mum and dad, who I will not look at right now, otherwise I WILL burst into tears. Thank you SO MUCH mum and dad so much for your love and support.”

The theme of the speech is now clear - thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But, once again, Winslet ignores the axiom that the word “so” reduces the effect rather than enhances it. It doesn't make you sound like you are more sincerely emotional. It makes you sound like you come from a posh bit of West London.

“I want to share this with two producers on this film, I know I'm not alone when I say I can't believe they are no longer with us, Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. You are much missed today, and you will be much missed for many years to come, and this is for you. Thank you. Thank you.”

It's obvious, when she begins the sentence about Minghella and Pollack, that she doesn't know where she's going with it. By suggesting that they are much missed today she is already implying that they might not be one day. That effect is rescued partly by saying “many years to come” but it still draws attention to the fact that one day we'll probably forget about them.

DANNY BOYLE

“Thank you very much. David Lean, whose name we are all honoured, all the nominees. He said you should begin, you should announce the ambition of the film in the first five minutes.

I would like to announce the ambition of my speech in the first minute to say that the wiring in my Dad's house blew overnight and it's just a big shout out to everyone who helped him get the extension cable in so he could watch this on television 'cos it'll mean a lot to him.”

This speech is a small masterpiece, structurally. Take the lay-out of this speech, fill it out to forty minutes and it would still work. I doubt this speech was the off-the-cuff. David Lean's advice applies even better to a speech than it does to a film. Boyle then moves immediately to a story that manages to cast himself as quirky and exhibits the affection he feels for his dad. That is exactly the way that a lad from Radcliffe tells his dad that he loves him live on national television.

“I would lastly like to thank my family, who are here tonight, Gabriel [shouts out "I love you, Dad"], who's 20 this weekend God bless him, Caitlin and Grace, and their Mum, Gail Stevens, who was the other casting director on the film and who is my last port of call in all professional matters.”

Here is a lesson that still waters can run deep. The big issue of any acceptance speech is how to thank the right people and then get off. Three strategies work: either be clever, be funny or be simple. In thanking his dad, Danny Boyle was funny. In thanking his family he plays it straight and it works.

“In a play I did there, by Howard Barker called Victory, there is a wonderful line at the end of it which says: ‘There is nowhere to go in the end but where you come from,' and with that in mind I would really like to thank Bafta. Thanks very much.”

This is such a good ending I intend to steal it. He's got a future in speechifying, this lad - as his dad would say. This is the third option: be clever. The wit of this pay-off is not just that the line from Howard Barker is a good one - though it is. It's not just that it's relevant to him and to the occasion - though it is both of those as well. It's that he manages to conceal his thanks to Bafta in the thought. There are very many showbiz ways to thank Bafta badly. This is not one of them.

TERRY GILLIAM

“That's not fair, standing up, it's just not fair. Looking at this thing, I think I'm amazed to be humbled by a piece of metal, but I believe I am.”

A nice thought ruined by a lack of preparation. If he had said simply “I am amazed to be humbled by a piece of metal but I am, truly I am” he would have found a pithier expression for the central idea. But he surrounds it with a four-out-of-ten ad lib and too many “thinks” and “believes”. It is exactly that sharpness you lose when you don't prepare properly.

“Orson Welles always seems to be quoting film-making as one of the greatest train sets a boy could hope to have. That's not exactly my experience, I'm afraid. To me it's more like a serious and particularly unpleasant medical condition, is what it is for me, I'm afraid. It's one of the terrible skin diseases that you scratch and scratch and they never go away, and that's what it's been like.”

It's not really, is it? It's not really like a skin disease. People with skin diseases don't say: ‘Oh, it's a bit like making phantasmogoric films.' This is another line that would not have survived even a quick edit. It's actually an indulgent metaphor - ill people really cannot escape their condition while you could have chosen to be a postman. We know what he means here but that is in spite of his words rather than because of them.

“But the main thing, and before I go, what never seems to happen in films is the little people never really get the thanks they deserve. So tonight I'm hoping we have the time, but I do want to thank all the little people. So if you will bear with me ... [Shakes out long list]. OK, here we go. [inaudible] the fabulous Time Bandits. Dr Parnassus, the astonishing, wonderful, close-to-the-ground, star of Big Brother as well, Verne Troyer. Thank you guys, wherever you are, for making me feel at all, and thank you Bafta for making me feel even taller. Thank you very much.”

A rambling end - Gilliam never quite reaches the emotional height you might expect when receiving the award of Fellowship of the Academy. The visual gag, in which he takes out an apparently long list of people to thank, falls flat and the lingering impression is the description of “the little people” who, if that is how they are to be thanked, might prefer anonymity in future.

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