I’ve done quite a few speeches over the years, the very first in 1980 in Buenos Aires at the Anglo-Argentine Cultural Society on English 18th century theatre, bizarrely enough. I was hungry and did it in order to eat.

Next I gave a talk at Stanford University on Central America’s wars, around 1984.

Then there was a long pause (though the Stanford speech went down surprisingly well, as I recall) before I started giving talks in South Africa on the political situation there before various groups, from Wits University to a formidable outfit called the South African Union of Jewish Women.

I cannot recall everything I’ve done, though a talk I gave at a Microsoft conference in Barcelona on Real Madrid’s marketing strategy (based on my book White Angels) was particularly lucrative. For some reason, I was invited to Venezuela in 2005 or so to give a keynote address to inaugurate a journalism prize.

In 2008 and 2009 I have spoken before many very varied audiences about my book, ‘Playing the Enemy’, in, among other places, New York, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Johannesburg and Copenhagen.