Speaking after an acrimonious meeting!
I had been a public speaker for almost a decade before I encountered a group having a really heated business meeting just before I was due to speak to them. It was a men's luncheon club and it took me by surprise. That evening I had another booking, this time for a women's institute, and their discussions also turned out to be very argumentative!
In both cases my talks to them afterwards went well, perhaps because they offered some light relief, but it was certainly an interesting day. The hundreds of gigs since then have been at groups where the vast majority of members have appeared to get on well with each other and I wasn't expecting my first talk in June to be any different, especially as I had spoken to this particular group twice before many years earlier and on both occasions I had really enjoyed the humour at their business meetings.
Back then they had nearly two hundred attending. The numbers have dropped over the years but there were still around 90 present that morning. The business meeting started and there was plenty of humour flying around once again until they started discussing a change in the group's name and membership criteria in a bid to prevent their numbers dropping further. This led to a number of objections from the floor and the sort of heated disagreements that I had not seen since that day in 2005. I was sitting listening to this and thinking 'I have to follow this soon and make them laugh'. My talk was The Power of Humour in Everyday Life and its credibility was certainly going to be tested! Actually, I was confident but it certainly wasn't an ideal warm-up for me!
But I needn't have worried. Large organisations often have reports from the smaller groups within them (theatre trips, bowling, etc) and the next speaker was a gentleman from their walks section. I wondered if his report would seem trivial to everybody following the row about the changes to their constitution but with his laid-back style and some gentle humour he quickly got everyone laughing. I was very impressed.
I then delivered my talk and it went brilliantly. There was a part where I had planned to include a story about the last time I spoke there and this did involve mentioning the higher audience numbers back then. I decided to press on with it ?but dealing with that detail in as few words as possible, certainly without referring back to the content of their meeting, and the anecdote itself got a big laugh.?
I received this testimonial after my talk:
"Thanks for your talk on 1st June. Your humour was very well received".
Public Speaking Tip #485:?You may find?yourself as a guest speaker at a meeting that turns out to be acrimonious. You are not a member of their organisation and the audience will sympathise with the situation you find yourself in. Take their minds off their earlier arguments with a decent presentation and they will certainly thank you for it.
?The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert
When I watched the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert on TV I thought the comedians who performed there had a near-impossible task. The performers, who ranged from the brilliant Lee Mack to others who, as far as I was concerned, fell into the categories of tolerable, OK-but-fast-becoming-overexposed and never-could-stand-them, were delivering comedy to a huge audience that was mostly there for the music, stretching out for a massive distance in front of them and in the open air! They had to perform very short pieces with no time to build, and with the added pressure of appearing on live TV with phenomenal worldwide viewing figures. In the circumstances I think they did very well. I later read that they had all been supporting each other backstage, offering advice on material, etc, which must have taken some of them back to their earliest days starting out in comedy clubs.
As far as the musical acts were concerned, as a speaker who is constantly blogging about tailoring content, it was interesting for me to see who chose to perform material that was actually appropriate. I was rather baffled by the stabbing theme with Mack The Knife and Delilah and by the young singer-songwriter who thought a song about a girl with a drug habit was the most fitting! On the other hand, Shirley Bassey's Diamonds Are Forever was the perfect choice and Stevie Wonder's rewriting of some his lyrics to be about the occasion was a breath of fresh air.
Public Speaking Tip #486: Just as tailored material makes a big impact, totally inappropriate content can stand out like a sore thumb!
One other thing about the singers. In July 2008 I blogged about attending the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards and about the terrific performance there by a then-unsigned new singer-songwriter simply called Jessie. Four years later, it was interesting to see her performing at this event, her name now one letter longer, her audience about one billion bigger!
Spirit of Wyke Women's Institute, Dorset
My next booking was to speak on The Power of Humour in Everyday Life to the?Spirit of Wyke WI?in Weymouth. In recent years, a huge number of 'new generation' WIs (or WI-lites as they are sometimes known) have started up, greatly boosting the organisation's national membership and replacing the many institutes that have closed down or been forced to merge. They tend to have a lower average age than more traditional WIs and, it must be said, have in some cases attracted negative publicity due to their rather tacky talks and theme nights and I have been rather wary of them overall but the ladies of Wyke were a lovely group to visit and the only real difference I noticed was that they are slightly less formal and meet in a pub, the Smugglers, rather than at a hall.
Before my talk they heard from speakers representing?Julia's House, the Dorset Children's Hospice, and watched a moving video presented by Martin Clunes, one of a large number of Dorset-based celebrities who support it.
Speaking after this was less of a challenge than speaking after the acrimonious meeting at my previous talk that month. The main concern was to avoid any material that might seem inappropriate so a quick review of my content was called for.
Public Speaking Tip #487: A speaker sometimes has to follow a sad announcement or charity appeal. Sticking to your prepared material - especially humour - can lift the mood but do check that there is no content which could come across as an insensitive gaffe.
The talk went very well. My thanks for the transport from the station and this testimonial:
"Just to say thank you very much for a delightful and funny evening, it was welcome after the sad video we had just seen. We didn't organise it that way but as it turned out it was good to have you follow on. Perhaps we will meet again at a future meeting, I've had good feedback from our members".
?Shrewton Women's Institute, Wiltshire
Two nights later I had another WI talk from a recommendation, this time on Patrick 'Call My Bluff' Campbell for?Shrewton WI?in Wiltshire. They meet at the Methodist Hall and were a great audience, picking up on all the nuances in the humour.
There have some terr sificpeakers among their members, including a lady in her nineties who has given nearly 1,000 talks and, as the meeting followed the Jubilee celbrations, another lady who gave a funny impromptu talk about meeting the Queen on two separate occasions.
My thanks to Jo for the transport from Salisbury station and back again.
Test Valley Retired Staff Association, Romsey
When a group only has 4 meetings a year - and only 2 of those feature speakers - you feel fortunate to be booked by them, especially when they turn out to be a great audience. This was certainly the case when I spoke to the Test Valley Retired Staff Association at the Crosfield Hall in Romsey about My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer and I really must thank them for the buffet afterwards, the lift to the station and one of the most, er, unusual raffle prizes I have ever won at a talk!
The passing of a great raconteur
I was saddened to learn of the death of one of Britain's greatest raconteurs, Victor Spinetti. My partner Val and I were lucky enough to catch his one man show at the?Nuffield Theatre in Southampton in 2001.
I remember the energy of the performance he gave in a theatre maybe only half-full on that Sunday evening.
I remember how he conjured up the images of the people he had met, for example, Salvador Dali. He drew an imaginary moustache extending several inches above either side of his upper lip and we could picture it there for the rest of the anecdote.
And I particularly remember how, when he came out on stage, he had a big stack of showbusiness biographies and he mentioned how he was a footnote in them because of his associations with stars like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and, of course, the Beatles. Later in the show, he poured himself a drink and managed to spill it over the books. He gave a mock cry of anguish 'Oh no, the books!', a stage hand came on and wiped up, he asked for a round of applause for him and then, with total professionalism, continued as if nothing had happened.
Public Speaking Tip #488: If something goes amusingly wrong during a presentation, have a bit of fun with it - and then get back down to business.
He was in demand for his storytelling right until the end of his life, in fact, on the day that his death was announced, he could be heard on a BBC Radio 2 documentary reminiscing about London's clubland.
His obituary appeared in all the broadsheets. Here is the one from the Daily Telegraph.
Overton U3A, Hampshire
I had a double booking the next day, first of all to speak on My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer for?Overton U3A?in St Mary's Hall. I got a great response and I was hugely grateful to their Speaker Co-ordinator Lesley for running me all the way back to Basingstoke which made it so much easier to get to my next booking in good time.?
She also sent me this lovely email:
"We have had a lot of positive feedback on your talk today!?It was lovely to meet you and hear about your life in comedy?writing. I have been smiling all day and spent ages telling my?husband all about you".
Woodley and Crampmoor Friendship Club, Hampshire
I was then met at Romsey station and driven to?Woodley Village Hall?ready to speak to ?Woodley and Crampmoor Friendship Club on the same topic. I met the lady who formed this club 25 years ago and she rightly proud that it is still going strong. An enjoyable afternoon. My thanks for the transport.
Clive James quote
Suzanne Moore in the Mail on Sunday on 24 June drew attention to a quote from Clive James, who said of Addenbrooke's Hospital: "It may not be as beautiful, perhaps, as the Taj Mahal, but it can save a life. It has been quietly busy saving mine". She wrote; "Yes, it's his brilliance in being able to say so much, so simply, that means we don't want him to go quiet yet".
Saying a great deal in very few words can be very effective on paper but it can also make a great impact in a speech. I can remember speaking at a lunch in Dorset in 1997. This was just a few weeks after the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 and the subject came up in conversation after my talk. Earl Spencer's eulogy had been the headline-grabber but one of the members of the club told me that he had been so struck by the very short poem by Henry Van Dyke, 'For Katrina's Sun Dial', read by the Princess's sister Lady Jane Fellowes, that he had immediately felt moved to write it down.
Public Speaking Tip #489: Public speaking may often seem rather wordy compared to everyday conversation but sometimes a short, simple paragraph can be remarkably effective.
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