By watching comedians who are successful and delivering knock your socks off comedy, men looking to deliver a funny best mans speech can emulate that success during their own moment in the limelight. The lessons are not so much in the gags themselves but in thinking about three things that have come together both onstage and of to great effect. Those things are Preparation, Organisation and Delivery. In the second article in the series, let's look at Preparation in a little more detail.

The best comedy and the best speeches are prepared in advance. All the elements are brought together to deliver a speech to maximum effect. In order to write a great best man speech, having your material up front will make your task simpler.

First, brainstorm your sources. Where are you going to get your material? When doing this try not to have too much of a set idea about where you want to take your speech as you don't want to miss themes which could make your speech a roaring success. Right now, just give yourself as many options as possible.

Don't just think of the best man in relation to yourself. Think of the others in his life such as the bride, immediate family and other friends. Ask the bride to suggest people who might be worth contacting. She'll know who's on the guest list, plus she can make them aware to expect a call from you.

Next, contact them to ask for anything they might have which you can use. Funny stories, video footage, photographs, childhood interests - they can all make great content. Make sure you promise to return it afterwards in the good order in which you found it. Chances are you won't use 80% of what you get but at this stage take as many options as you can get.

Once you have it, just look through the material and absorb the content. Dismiss nothing. The more open your mind, the more ideas will start to come together and give you avenues to explore. With an open mind you may link a photo from a relative to another unrelated story with outstanding results. So what that it's not the truth this is exactly how urban legends are born.

Keep notes - have a notebook handy. Look through the material and as thoughts spring to mind, make a quick note. You may not use it but it's better to have the idea on paper and then discard it rather than not write it down and kick yourself later.

Try and repeat the exercise to absorb the content, because ideas can take a little time to come together. Doing this gives you more chances to come up with more ideas and the more material you have, the stronger your best mans speech and the more memorable it will be.

As the ideas start to come together, get them down on paper. What you should start to see are themes coming through and similar thoughts start to repeat themselves. What will be happening is your work is starting to come together. When this happens, keep them safe for the next part of the process - organising your speech for maximum impact.