The Oldie of The Year Awards 2024 - Bill Wyman - The Oldie of The Year Acceptance Speech

"I’ve got a little thing written down...

I feel very embarrassed. I’m very honoured to receive this but it's also strange to me to be here, as a poor working class kid from South London.

I can only thank my grandma. She taught me everything. She taught me to write a diary, to scrapbook, the art of collecting things, to say the alphabet backwards.

Anyone else?

Someone’s nodding over there... (at the request of a wayward heckle Wyman does prove he can still say the alphabet backwards much to our delight)

I can never thank my grandma for what she did for me. I wouldn’t be me without all she’s done. I get very emotional when I speak about her. I simply wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for her.

She sadly died at the age of 61, before I had fame and fortune really, and I never got to thank her for what she did for me.

However, one thing I want to share which I will always remember is that she used to say to me to grow up thinking about the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling."

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Sponsored by Baillie Gifford
Photos by Neil Spence Photography