Nick R Thomas - A Public Speaker's Blog

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Wednesday, January 23

Public Speaking? I was driven to it!

by Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking) on Wed 23 Jan 2008 06:03 AM GMT

Durlston WI

I had a great deal to do last Monday before I set off to give an afternoon talk in Swanage: I proof-read the 250 items of original observational humour that I was sending to a radio presenter and then I wrote my fortnightly 600-word article for the Radio Magazine. I then made notes from the online versions of most of that day's papers so that on the 65-minute bus ride over to the Purbecks I could use these as inspiration to write a minimum of half a dozen topical gags and observations for another radio presenter and a similar number for a further comedy client! I thought I was going to miss the the Wilts and Dorset service150 thanks to a connecting bus which was being driven so slowly that it would have been faster if we'd all got out and pushed but I did manage to catch it and by the time I arrived at Swanage, the material had all been written and emailed from my Blackberry in time for the respective deadlines so I made my way to the Mowlem Theatre for the WI.

Public Speaking Tip #115: If you own a car, using public transport to get to a speaking engagement may sound unthinkable (and it is certainly true that some venues are not accessible by bus, coach or train anyway) but it does have the advantage that you can use the travelling time for work - perhaps even some last minute revision or mental rehearsal of your presentation material!

People are frequently astounded that I travel to speaking engagements all over England by public transport. I have even had the odd club book me but then cancel when they have discovered this - despite there being very regular buses virtually to and from the door of their venue (thank you very much, a certain ladies' church group near Christchurch! If I can get to talks in Driffield, Grimsby, the West Midlands and Herefordshire then why would Burton have been a problem?)

Many car owners seem to be fascinated or even utterly perplexed by my means of getting around. The first time I ever spoke at a local Probus Club lunch, back in 1996, I was asked by their President to tell him something about myself for the introduction. It was at a time when I had become really busy so I told him that as well as having written for two BBC radio topical comedy series for many years, I was now writing humour for DJs on a daily basis and supplying scripts for cabaret acts and speakers. I added that a few months earlier I had performed a stand-up spot on a Radio 2 programme and had been interviewed afterwards by George Melly and that the previous year I had been on TV in a revival of What's My Line?

'And how did you get here today?', he asked.
'I was given a lift by one of your members, Mr So-and-so', I replied.

This was my introduction:

'Well, gentlemen, our speaker this afternoon is Nick Thomas. Now, I've been talking to Nick and he's a very interesting chap because he tells me he doesn't drive!'

Public Speaking Tip #116: Introductions may not always turn out the way you were expecting. Don't let this throw you!

The members of Durlston WI had heard me twice before and this time the subject was 'I Must Write That Down!: A Commonplace Book'. Regular readers of this blog may remember that this was the new talk I delivered to Southbourne Literary Society back in November. I was now presenting it to a different type of audience and although the subject itself is a literary one, I replaced some of the readings with personal anecdotes, some of them drawn from my other talks but new to this group. I must say this revised version fitted the allotted time perfectly - I was recording it and the 45 minute tape finished exactly as I was delivering the final quotation! I have already taken further bookings for this talk so it was pleasing to see that it appears to work for other audiences besides literary groups.

Public Speaking Tip #117: If you have specific presentations which you deliver on a regular basis to different audiences, aim to have more tried and tested material than you need to fill the time slot. This way, you can 'pick 'n' mix' the content so that it is more tailored to a particular group.

It also means that you could, perhaps as an emergency measure during a presentation which is not going as well as you had hoped, replace part of your planned material with something which might just work better with that audience.

Durlston WI put the speaker on just after the 2.30pm start of their meeting, unlike most Women's Institutes who have their business meetings and sometimes a tea-break before the talk. This is fine just as long as neither you or your audience members are running late!

Back in the late 90s, I spoke to another Purbeck area WI two years in succession. They started both these meetings at the very early time of 2pm and put me on straight away. Furthermore, the part of the room I was asked to speak from was right next to the door. On both occasions, a succession of latecomers arrived at regular intervals throughout my talk and had to walk past me to get in the hall! I would have no objection to speaking there again but can you guess what changes I might ask for if they book me a third time?

But there were no such problems with the 25 ladies at Durlston and after the tea and biscuits I left and they got on with their business meeting.

I have been trying to think when I last had a sequence like the first five talks of this year - all of them for ladies' groups for identical fees (plus travel where they were a bit further afield). It's funny how the bookings fall sometimes.

One thing I have to mention about my last half dozen talks is that merchandising has been virtually non-existent. This has been due to a combination of my having visited some organisations before so members have bought my booklet already, certain places having a 'no selling rule' and perhaps people watching their spending during the post-Christmas period.

I certainly intend to write other books to sell besides 'Nick R's in a Twist!' but I am still considering what form the next one will take. Humorous anecdotes about my writing experiences as opposed to speaking? Will that have the same appeal? It all needs to be carefully planned.

Public Speaking Tip #118: If you earn extra income through merchandising at speaking engagements, this will drop during repeat bookings unless you have a new item to offer/the organisation you are speaking to has a number of different members attending.

No visit to Swanage is ever complete for me without a walk up to look out across the bay from Peveril Point. One of the disadvantages in my not having a car is that I have to lug all my props, etc. around with me after a talk which means that I can never combine a speaking engagement with an unencumbered walk around a scenic area so I carried my heavy bags up the hill and got caught in an incredibly heavy rainstorm on the way down but never mind; overall it had been a good day.

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Sunday, January 20

Just doing a bit of window stopping

by Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking) on Sun 20 Jan 2008 12:51 AM GMT

Emsworth WI

I was back in Emsworth last Friday morning for a return visit to their Women's Institute who I had last spoken to a year before. I arrived in good time and began my talk about Patrick Campbell for the 55 ladies present.

About halfway through, their President got a signal from a member in the second row that the room was too cold (they had heaters on but a skylight was open) so she stood up a few feet off to the side of me and started pulling the cords to try and close it. I was halfway through a story at the time and immediately most heads had turned to watch her, with the result that I was now seemingly talking to myself!

To have just stopped dead would have looked tetchy so I abbreviated that part of my presentation as best I could and waited for the matter to be sorted out. I got a laugh from the audience by saying that I expected the President to go shooting up into the ceiling on the end of the cord (it reminded me of the classic Gerard Hoffnung 'Barrel of Bricks' routine), the window was eventually closed, she apologised and I very swiftly re-capped and continued.

I have noticed that audiences who know each other well seem to be the most easily distracted if one of them arrives late, leaves the room, closes a window, etc - however well the speaker's presentation is being received. Other groups tend to be more focussed and better able to ignore such goings-on.

Interruptions are an occupational hazard for any speaker. When I was teaching my more advanced 'Stage 2' presentation skills evening classes, there would be a fun lesson where I would deliberately interrupt my more experienced students' presentations by dropping things noisily on the floor, banging doors shut, even sitting on a whoopee cushion, but this wasn't so much an exercise about coping with the unexpected, it was more to do with them not losing their thread.

A speaker has to make a very quick decision about how to deal with each interruption as it occurs. If you try to shout over the sound of the loud siren of the police car driving past the venue, you may give the impression that you are so at the mercy of your script that it will be fatal for you to stop! Some interruptions will dictate that you have to stop immediately anyway, for example, if an audience member is taken ill (this has happened during a few of my talks but I was reassured afterwards that it was nothing to do with my choice of material!) Sometimes the interruptions will continue throughout your presentation (I once gave talk to a Wine Circle who met in one room of a Community Centre while a local amateur dramatic society rehearsed the village pantomime in a neighbouring hall with very thin walls. Can you imagine that? Oh yes you can!) And there are occasions when you can just carry on and ignore what appears to be a minor interruption because stopping would draw it to the attention of people who wouldn't otherwise have noticed it.

The comfort of an audience is very important and I certainly would not have wanted the nice ladies of Emsworth to be cold - that would have been another, prolonged interruption in its own right - but I must admit that I was a little surprised by the level of distraction caused by this business; with hindsight, I think I would have preferred it if their President had stopped me, perhaps during a natural break in my material, in order to deal with the window.

Public Speaking Tip #114: If an interruption occurs during your presentation, you have to make a fast decision about whether to ignore it (such as in the case of someone's mobile going off) or stop altogether (for example, a medical emergency or noise which is too loud for you to compete with). An interruption is beyond a speaker's control; all you can do is control your response to it.

As with my last two visits to Emsworth, I went to Bookends and this time I picked up a slim volume of quotations, many of which were unfamiliar to me, and a biography of Jack Benny co-written by his widow. Benny was, of course, best-known as a stage, radio and TV comedian (not to mention violinist!) but he also gave highly-acclaimed speeches (which, according to this book, he wrote himself). I am really looking forward to reading the life story of a comedian and speaker who knew, perhaps more than any, the power of the pause - and had the confidence to employ it.

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Wednesday, January 16

TG Tips

by Nick R Thomas A.L.A.M. (Public Speaking) on Wed 16 Jan 2008 10:00 PM GMT

Swanmore and Southbourne Townswomen's Guilds

I had two talks last Wednesday, both for Townswomen's Guilds here in Bournemouth. In the afternoon, I made a return visit to the Swanmore Guild where I last spoke 15 months ago. This time I spoke about 'The Power of Humour in Everyday Life' and this talk lasted just over 40 minutes as I was trying to save my voice as I had a further engagement that evening. There were about 25 present and it seemed to go ok.

The last time I spoke there, the afternoon was spoiled when, just as I was leaving, a member came up and moaned for several minutes about how unhappy she had been about the reply she had received when she wrote to a certain celebrity who I have supplied scripts for in the past - as if this was anything to do with me! It was rather like somebody complaining to a self-employed shopkeeper about the actions of one his customers!

I don't know if this lady was absent on my return visit but I was relieved that I wasn't accosted by her again!

Public Speaking Tip #112: Even when your presentation has been very well received by an organisation, you will, from time to time, find yourself approached by the odd individual with a negative outlook/axe to grind. Other members are often very good at spotting this and 'rescuing' a hapless speaker but if they don't, you just have to be polite - while making good your 'escape!'

Later, I spoke to Southbourne Evening TG about 'The Comedy of Life'. I certainly had plenty of material that they had not heard before as it was exactly eleven years since I last spoke to them! In the intervening period, the Afternoon Guild in Southbourne has closed down but the Evening TG has managed to keep going and, despite a number of absentees, there were still about 30 there. My voice held out long enough for me to speak for an hour and they were a lovely audience.

But why such a long period between the bookings? Could it have been something I said last time? No. In my early years as a speaker, I didn't offer much in the way of further titles as I was busy honing my original talk by delivering it to hundreds of different organisations all over the country. The Speaker Secretary who had originally booked me back in January 1997 passed away a number of years ago, just before I finally started adding new titles, and one of her successors heard about me from somewhere else and booked me, not realising that I had ever spoken there in the past.

Before leaving, I made sure they knew that I now have a number of additional talks!

Public Speaking Tip #113: You have to keep in touch with organisations you have spoken to in the past, for example, by sending details by post or email about any new talks you have to offer. When it comes to booking their programmes for a season, they will usually give preference to a good, reliable speaker who is already known to them.

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