Bourne Valley Horticultural Society, Winterbourne Earls

Last Thursday (November 1st), I set off to speak on 'The Comedy of Life' at the Bourne Valley Horticultural Society, Winterbourne Earls, near Salisbury. I caught a Virgin train from Bournemouth and changed at Southampton. Before, I write about the talk itself, I must give a special mention to the Train Manager (I think we used to call these people guards or conductors!), a man whose announcements managed to turn this straightforward 30-minute journey into a grim experience.

He told us as we set off that the shop on board would soon be open. Unfortunately, that was the last positive thing he said. He asked that all luggage be removed from seats. Now, I can fully appreciate from personal experience how annoying it is when you're trying to find a spare seat on a crowded train and the few available are covered with bags by someone who's obviously keen not to share their own little (double) space. It probably isn't too hygienic either, having luggage that's been on the floor put on a seat, but this was a man obsessed. He came through our (at least half-empty) carriage checking tickets and demanding that offending items be removed - although I couldn't actually see any to start with!

Still, it meant there was certainly plenty of choice of seats for the two  passengers I saw getting on at Brockenhurst. They were told about the shop, too - but only as the point where they should meet him to purchase tickets 'and avoid a fine'. Then we had more 'no-bags' nagging and by the time we arrived at Southampton Central, I felt as if I was back in school with some particularly oppressive teacher, not on a train as an adult paying customer! In fact, the atmosphere throughout the entire carriage was miserable. He then told passengers alighting at Southampton to have their tickets ready for inspection at the barrier. I studied him as we waited to get off and noticed that he bore something of a resemblance to Perluigi Collina, the cadaverous-looking football referee who achieved worldwide fame during Euro 2004 - except that even he is occasionally seen smiling.

The train was scheduled to continue on to Dundee but for me, even a few minutes more as far as Southampton Parkway would have been too much! What a difference from Virgin Trains' usually upbeat and cheerful on-board announcements.

Public Speaking Tip #61: Unless you are in the unenviable position of having to break some tragic news, there are very few announcements which cannot be improved by a positive delivery and the injection of some humour. The results can be measured immediately in your audience's reaction.

The second leg of the journey, from Southampton to Salisbury, was much more easy-going and I was given a lift from the station by Lynn James, whose husband Neil is a brilliant wildlife photographer. I have put a link to his website in my Favourites list.

Although I was speaking to a Horticultural Society, my talk was not about gardening but 'The Comedy of Life' (another title for the talk that I have delivered over the years as 'Harnessing Life's Humour', 'The Riches of Embarrassment' or, more usually nowadays, 'The Power of Humour in Everyday Life'). In my earliest days as a speaker, I did try to put together a talk based entirely on a few years of gardening experience. A short version went reasonably well with a small group and I was then booked by a much larger club for a longer talk. I decided to pad this out with readings of horticultural humour from various writers but, as the date approached, I knew I had bitten off more than I could chew! I watched in horror as 150 people paid to hear me, 150 people who sat in near-silence for the best part of an hour as I spoke. My own gardening anecdotes were nothing new to them and I certainly didn't have enough experience at delivering prose back then to make the readings from other writers come alive as they deserved to. Never again! That was nearly ten years ago and I still shudder when I think about it.

Public Speaking Tip #62: Gain as much speaking experience as you can - but stick to what you know or you will soon be found out by members of specialist audiences with far more knowledge than you.

So now I stick to subjects which I am really familiar with, i.e., my own experiences in comedy/public speaking, or lectures about writers and performers who I know a lot about (although I still put in a great deal of additional research on them anyway).

The 'Comedy of Life/Power of Humour' talk is one where I  select material from a large number my tried and tested stories to suit the audience/occasion.

Public Speaking Tip #63: You should always be honing additional material. This gives you a wider selection to choose from in preparing a presentation, enables you to switch content, if necessary, during it and may even give you something extra to include in a brief form during questions afterwards. You will eventually have enough to return to the same audience with a 'Part 2' of at least equal quality to the first - and without repeating any part of it.

Make a note of what material from a wide selection you actually use.

I was wary of the fact that this society had never had a non-horticultural speaker before. I like to go to places where they are used to having regular speakers on a wide variety of topics. I once spoke after a Mothers Union New Year lunch for about 75 pensioners in a barn of a room and got very little response. I only discovered afterwards that in previous years they had always had musicians, singers, etc - not speakers. The following year, I received a muted response from a retirement club which met every month but only had speakers a couple of times a year - and the last one had been one of their own members. Again, they weren't really in the habit of listening to talks.

On the other hand, I have had very good experiences at a couple of National Trust groups, despite perhaps not being their usual type of speaker, and I had an excellent response in 2004 when I spoke at the AGM of the Salisbury Twinning Association in the presence of the city's Mayor - an event where they had never booked a speaker as entertainment before.

The Bourne Valley Horticultural Society had been advertising my talk in their programme for nearly a year and as 45 members had turned up (double the number who had come along the previous month for a speaker on an interesting and more related topic) I was confident that my talk would work there.

Public Speaking Tip #64: When you receive an invitation to speak, always check that the audience is a) accustomed to listening to speakers and b) likely to appreciate your subject - otherwise, no-one is going to be happy.

The talk went well but I couldn't resist crowbarring in anything remotely horticulture-related, such as mentioning the corporate video scripts I'd written to help Bournemouth win a number of prestigious awards, relating any gags and sketches I'd written over the years that were remotely garden-themed. With hindsight, I did this far more than I needed to.

And then - disaster!

For this blog to have any credibility, it is important that I am totally honest with my readers - and that includes being open about my mistakes. It's all very well to post about presentations that have gone swimmingly but even highly experienced speakers get things wrong from time to time and I need to tell you about these so that we can all learn something.

There is a quotation that I finish most of my talks with. It's not that well-known so it's new to the audience but it's also very apt (it gets murmurs of 'That's true' everywhere I use it!). I credit the author then go straight into it, only on this occasion...my mind went blank. I wasn't using notes for it, after all, I've delivered it a couple of hundred times, so there was nothing to remind me. At last something came back to me and I started to deliver it - back to front! Then I finally remembered it and put it across correctly and finished. I'd managed to joke my way through this embarrassment, the audience laughed along with me and I got a great reception afterwards, sold a number of my books, chatted to loads of people who said they'd really enjoyed the talk, etc, but, of course, we always dwell on the mistakes, not the successful parts, don't we?

I can blame over-confidence, over-familiarity or simply the fact that extemporising too much with all the unnecessary gardening references meant that I lost my drift, but whatever the reason, it shook me and reminded me to pay special attention to this quote (and the rest of my familiar material in the future).

Public Speaking Tip #65: Even if you are using the same material over and over again, you still need regular rehearsals/reminders or sooner or later you will go wrong - especially if you deviate from your prepared script!

Public Speaking Tip #66: Even the most experienced speakers sometimes make mistakes. Go to see a play in London's West End and you will see some of the world's top actors occasionally stumble over a line. They calmly go back, repeat it correctly - and carry on as if nothing has happened. Public speaking isn't about being perfect, it's about being the best you can on the day. Don't dwell too much on your public speaking mistakes other than to learn from them where possible.

I tape the majority of my talks (on a good old-fashioned cassette recorder, no less!) and, listening to the playback, the pauses while I struggled were only a couple of seconds - they just felt longer!

Public Speaking Tip #67: Record your presentations. This is especially useful for beginners as it really helps with timing material, learning to emote, etc, but it's a good habit for all speakers. It's not only a useful record of what material you've used and a  source for demos, it also lets you hear that any mistakes didn't sound quite as bad as you may have thought!