I know this conference should have started an hour ago and I apologise for that. But being late is, appropriately, the topic for tonight.

Let's talk first about my personal history. I'll keep it short and simple: never in my life I have been able to meet a deadline. I was ten days overdue when I was delivered in this world. I was late learning to talk, I was late learning to walk, I was late dating girls, I was late for school. Because I could never be there in time, I flunked my exams, I had to cancel my wedding and I was fired from my successive jobs. This is not my fault. I never wanted that. Fortunately, being alone and without a job left me plenty of time to investigate the matter, and I?ve come today, at great personal cost, to expose what I believe now is a

GLOBAL CONSPIRACY,

mark my words, aimed to make me waste time in such a way that no matter how I try, no matter how I strive, I end up being late.

I am not the only one. It's true that many people who apparently suffer from the same inability are just indolent slobs who get a rash anytime they hear the word ?work?. Still, I have received heaps of letters from people whose affliction is strikingly similar to mine and I do believe them. I guess that many of the people here today know what I?m talking about [applause]. Of course, some of you may be thinking, ?Oh, just another excuse for your congenital laziness?. But no, my parents were punctual as far as the precision of their timepieces would allow. The genes I inherited are perfectly suited to the working experience, and unless a bad mutation caused by a radioactive spill or a spider bite changed my DNA in my mother's womb, my genes produce perfectly valid work-ready enzymes.

So it is a CONSPIRACY.

By CONSPIRACY, I mean that a group of people disseminated around the planet is actively pursuing the goal of making me, and many others, disrespect the sacred notion of punctuality.

Some of these CONSPIRATORS can be seen and found everywhere. You may know their names already. It's the undecided person ahead of you in the waiting line. It's the the sluggish clerk who can't understand your order. It's the bus driver who stays below the speed limit.

But there are other CONSPIRATORS, even more noxious, even more secretive. These are itsy-bitsy creatures that live in timepieces and wake-up radios. These creatures sabotage these devices, making them