The first guest speaker at the Herefordshire Federation of Women's Institutes Annual Council Meeting 2008 was The Right Worshipful Mayor of Hereford, Councillor Chris Chappell, who spoke for 15 minutes.

He started with a joke about having two Mayoresses, one for the day and one for the night! After the laughter died down, he explained that both his wife and a female councillor shared the duties of accompanying him to functions. It was a good start to his speech, a slightly risqué remark which turned out to have a perfectly innocent meaning (what we writers for BBC Radio's News Huddlines used to call a self-cleaning gag!) and it was pitched just right for this audience.

He then took the words of William Blake's 'Jerusalem' which the audience had just sung and examined how they applied to the WI and to Herefordshire. He probably wasn't the first to do this and I doubt if he will be the last but it was very effective.

Public Speaking Tip #198: If you are speaking to a particular organisation, why not look at their motto, mission statement or anthem to see if this inspires any ideas?

You could also request a copy of their newsletter or house publication. The content may not be quite as familiar to your audience as the above (not everyone present will have read them!) but they could, once again, give you a theme to tailor a speech around.

As someone from outside the area, I had no idea which political party Councillor Chappell was from because he kept his speech non-political (I later learned that he is a Labour councillor but he certainly didn't make the mistakes that his former party leader did when speaking to a large WI gathering in 2000!)

Instead, his words conveyed a great sense of pride in the county and were very well received.

Chatting to him over lunch, he told me that during his year in office he had attended around 500 functions - now that's a lot of public speaking!

My thanks to Erica Creer for the photo.