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Bill Murray gatecrashes party and delivers amazing speech: ‘You know how they say funerals aren't for the dead but for the living?’

The actor arrives impromptu to a stag do in Charleston and does not disappoint in speech video

Ella Alexander
Wednesday 28 May 2014 12:38 BST
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Bill Murray gatecrashed a stag party at a steakhouse in Charleston last weekend and offered some sage advice to everyone except the groom.

(Scroll down to watch video)

The 63-year-old actor has been married and divorced twice, first to Margaret Kelly and secondly to Jennifer Butler.

The party of 20 were having dinner when one of the ‘stags’ noticed Bill Murray sitting on the floor below. They offered to buy him a drink, to which he declined, before asking if he’d like to say a few words for the groom.

The actor declined once again, but then walked into the party’s room minutes later.

Describing how he has “a little experience in this”, he addressed the groom’s single friends because “it’s too late” for the man getting married.

“You know how they say funerals aren't for the dead but for the living? Well, bachelor parties are not for the groom; they’re for the uncommitted,” he said to rapturous applause from the room.

He then went on to deliver a few words of wisdom about how to decide who to marry.

“If you have someone that you think is 'The One', don't just sort of think in your ordinary mind, 'Ok, let's pick a date. Let's plan this and make a party and get married.' Take that person and travel around the world,” he said.

“Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world, and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. And if when you come back to JFK, when you land in JFK, and you're still in love with that person, get married at the airport.”

He then instructs the crowd to pick the groom up over their shoulders, to which they enthusiastically oblige. Murray then calmly leaves the room.

The actor is known for being the life and soul of parties. At the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party in March, he reportedly got a series of high-profile guests on the dance floor, before later participating in what sounds like an unmissable dance-off between himself, Rosario Dawson and Spike Lee to the sounds of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

He also has a reputation for turning up announced to stranger’s events. In January 2011, he joined a group of karaoke singers in their private booth, belting out renditions of Elvis. In October 2012, he “popped out of nowhere” and participated in a stranger’s football game on Roosevelt Island.

However, perhaps our favourite Murray incident took place during a 2006 trip to St Andrews in Scotland. The actor accompanied 22-year-old anthropology student Lykke Stavnef, whom he and his friends had met in a bar, to a house party and even did the washing up at the end.

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