Brilliant blog post here by Seth Godin:

I was at a gala a few weeks ago (featuring no less than ten speakers). At least 80% of them began their talk by saying, “I know you’re hungry, but…” or “I know it’s late, but…” or “I know you want to go home, but…” and then apologized for giving a speech.

If your speech needs to be prefaced by an apology…

don’t give it.

But he doesn’t say what to do if people are expecting you to give the speech.  If you have prepared one, but it’s clearly going to be greeted with a groan, what do you do?

Perhaps you can print it out as an article in advance, read out your apologetic preamble, wave a bunch of copies of the speech in the air and say “come and geddit!”, and sit down. 

And you could include a bunch of promotional material for your own business in the bundle.