The guest speaker at Sift Media's 2007 Business Software Satisfaction Awards ceremony in London on Tuesday 9 October was Barry Cryer, the legendary comedian and performer.

A true professional with an epic CV to prove it, Barry served up a 30-minute barrage of gags that concluded with a poem specially composed for the occasion. To preserve the work for posterity, one of our reporters retrieved the coffee-stained script afterwards. Here is the ode in full:

once more unto the speech, dear friends, once more
and sing in praise of the awards
an occasion such as this affords
me the opportunity to leap into action
hoping to ensure your satisfaction
here at the bacchanalian Brewery
as I stand here before you, my jury
and by the way, though your mood may harshen
bacchanalian means to bet on a martian
moving on - tonight, mid this mood of consolidation
not to mention sales motivation
so i won't - as we relax in celebration
mid an atmosphere of bunting and frolic
a phrase i dread after too much alcoholic
intake - i feel a sense of compatibility
and so, to the best of my ability
i shall adopt an attitude - not aloft
but gentle - almost micro soft
to woo you - i was once a technological dinosaur, a consummate cynic
declared negative at every VDU clinic
but i now realise what shakespeare meant
when he wrote "now is the printer of our disk content"
and furthermore, as we all known
"softwarefore are thou, romeo"
i see before me, chattering, nattering,
managers and also a smattering
of accountants and t'is a crying shame
that 99% of them get the other 1% a bad name
i now feel my S-A-P rising
my IRIS widening, it's not surprising
as these names resound
you are Infor a penny, Infor a pound
your Kashflow with a "k"
rolls on - and may i say
before i become a fidgeter
i salute OLAP-based Excel and Digita
onward I paddle my rhyming coracle
desperately seeking a rhyme for Oracle
enough!! my system draws near to a crash
tout suite, NetSuite, i must now dash
to a close - cease my poetic spreadsheet analysis
life is full of enormous fallacies
if you see what i mean - my program, with one "m"
is done - my metrical practice, my hopefully funny function, I must stem
my flow, all's done and said
so, with a joyful cry of "XL Cub-ed"
the message coming down the wire
i greet you, toast you, thank you, barry cryer.

* * *

Thank you again, Barry - the cheque's in the post. He also asked us to mention his forthcoming appearances at the Brighton Comedy Festival and new stage tours of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'. If you are organising a conference or corporate event and would like to contribute to Mr Cryer's pension fund, he can be reached via The Gordon Poole Agency.