June Whitfield on the South Bank Show

I finally got around to watching a video of the recent South Bank Show about June Whitfield. It's often fun when I see comedy documentaries to count the number of people featured in them who I have had some professional involvement with (an edition of The Comedy Map of Britain earlier in the year had six!). There were four in this one: June herself (I was lucky enough to have her perform my material over 23 series of the News Huddlines), Roy Hudd (of course!), June's daughter Suzy Aitchison who was in a sketch of mine on Radio 2's June Whitfield's Variety and Sarah Thomas from Last of the Summer Wine, who once delivered a couple of my lines when she guested on Week Ending.

Something that was frequently mentioned on the South Bank Show was June's excellent comic timing. Aspiring speakers who want to include humour in their speeches are sometimes worried about not being able to do it justice; their catchphrase is often 'But I'm not a comedian'. No audience will be expecting you to put material across with the level of professionalism of a June Whitfield or a Roy Hudd who each have more than half a century of comedy experience to draw upon but we can all learn something by observing the greats.

When I started out as a speaker, I had been selling my comic scriptwriting for many years but I still turned to recordings of professional raconteurs to learn how to deliver an effective personal anecdote.

I listened to the great Blaster Bates (my behind-the-scenes account of one of my TV appearances is an homage to his Blaster at the Beeb tale) and retired air traffic controller David Gunson's What Goes Up Might Come Down! Then there were all the 'An Evening with...' tapes: An Evening with Sir Peter Ustinov, Jon Pertwee's An Evening with the Doctor...

And having been a Marx Brothers fan for so many years, I already owned An Evening with Groucho, a fantastic one-man show he recorded at Carnegie Hall when he was 82.

As the years went on, I collected many more: Ned Sherrin's Theatrical Anecdotes, An Audience with Barry Norman, An Evening with Alan Titchmarsh...

I'm not a great sports fan but some sporting speakers have released very good recordings of their one-man shows, for example, Henry Cooper's An Evening with Our 'Enery and the cricket collection of Evenings with Dickie Bird, Blowers (Henry Blofeld) plus, of course, Johnners.

There are few greater raconteurs than Victor Spinetti, whose A Very Private Diary (not that private as it's recorded in front of a live audience!) is available as a CD.

An Audience with Barry Cryer consists more of jokes than anecdotes but these are linked together logically in an after dinner style. A speaker can learn more from this than a CD by a stand-up comic.

And then there is An Audience with Tony Benn. He may not be to everyone's political taste but he is one of our great public speakers. This recording includes some wonderful dry humour and a fascinating question and answer session.

The point is not to listen to these speakers to steal their material - you should use your own - but to note how they structure and deliver a story. Some, such as Henry Cooper and Brian Johnston, do include old gags but there is still enough personal material on their records to make them reward repeated listening.

Many will now only be available on secondhand cassettes through outlets like www.amazon.co.uk, others are easily obtainable on CD, including, I am delighted to say, a number by the late Blaster Bates, starting with Laughter with a Bang. Some are also out as downloads. Of course, some speakers' shows are also obtainable on video/DVD so you get to see the visual dimension of their performances. Sadly, there seems to be a real shortage of such recordings by female performers, except Joyce Grenfell and hers consist largely of her classic sketches rather than humorous personal stories.

But you can hear a number of male and female entertainers delivering anecdotes and sayings in front of a live audience on a recording from Radio 4's excellent Quote Unquote.

It would be wonderful if June could release an 'Evening with' recording. For the moment, we must make do with her autobiography, the cleverly titled '...and June Whitfield', published by Corgi. She deserved her South Bank Show tribute and it is fantastic to see her still performing at 81.

Public Speaking Tip #14: Listen to the humorous delivery of the most accomplished speakers and then apply this to your own comic material. A good 'An Evening with...' live recording can be an invaluable aid.

UPDATE: There are few greater raconteurs than Victor Spinetti, whose A Very Private Diary (not that private as it's recorded in front of a live audience!) is now available as a CD.

And June now has a book of pictures from her amazing career entitled At A Glance: An Absolutely Fabulous Life. I guess that's the nearest we'll get to a PowerPoint presentation from her!