Drayton and Farlington Carers' Support Group

My talk on 9 October was for the Drayton and Farlingrton Carers' Support Group in Cosham, Hampshire.

I have spoken several times in Cosham and I have to say i find it to be a very friendly town, the sort of place where total strangers smile and say hello to me in the street (and when I'm walking along deep in thought about my next gig, I don't exactly look approachable!) On one occasion, I had just got off the train and was looking at the map to refresh my memory about how to get to the Southern Electricity premises where I had spoken a year earlier and a chap on his lunch break spotted me and insisted on giving me a lift for no payment to the venue over a mile away.

The venue this time was the Drayton Institute, a small but remarkably busy centre where I was due to speak to an audience of nearly 20 carers and helpers. I had just started My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer when a member interrupted and said that a couple of ladies, one in particular, couldn't hear me. Now I project pretty well (especially to tiny audiences in small rooms) but apparently there were members who had hearing aids and needed the loop system from the microphone - which I had not been asked to use!

Rather than lose any more time setting it up, it was agreed that I would speak louder and somewhat slower than usual and we would see how we all got on! Now, humorous speakers can sometimes rattle off our words more quickly than others. It's perhaps to do with timing and also because we have a lot of tried and tested material which we know will get laughs if there's room for it. One of my fellow humorous speakers in the Bournemouth area, the hugely-respected Reverend Stewart Timbrell, is renowned for his rapid-fire delivery.

I found it to be an interesting experiment. There were one or two items which I had to omit altogether because I would have needed more notice to alter the way in which I timed the delivery. Meanwhile. the remaining material, which would probably have taken 45 minutes to deliver under normal circumstances, occupied nearly an hour. The audience was very sharp and even applauded the odd line.

Afterwards, I made a point of asking the two ladies whether they had been able to follow me. The first one said that she certainly had and the second (the one who had asked me to slow right down) said she had been able to catch most of it (I had noticed her laughing at regular intervals) but I gave her a copy of my booklet in case she had missed anything!

All told, it would have been much easier for everyone if the mic and loop system had been employed but it was a useful experience for me to self-edit that much as I went along because I knew I might overrun (an hour was the allotted time).

Public Speaking Tip #256: There may be odd occasions when you suddenly have to - or want to - chop and change parts of your well-honed material, considering each line just before delivery and making rapid alterations where necessary. This shows that you are not at the mercy of a parrot-fashion, 'party piece' script but able to extemporise around your set information, anecdotes, etc. I am constantly coming up with unplanned little extras and changes which I had no idea I was going to deliver until a split second before I do. To me, this feels like real speaking - not mere recitation.

After tea and a nice chat with the members, it was time to leave and, with that customary Cosham kindness, I was given a lift back into town.