North Baddesley Women's Institute Annual Dinner

My February speaking engagements finished with four talks in seven days.

On 15 February, I spoke at the annual dinner of the North Baddesley Women's Institute. This is, in effect, their Christmas dinner but it works out better for them to hold it at this time of year!

When I was sent the menu so I could confirm my choices last month, I discovered that we were having a starter, soup, main course (turkey, cranberry sauce, etc!), a dessert, cheeseboard and coffee and mince pies! I therefore suggested that it might be be an idea to cut the length of the talk from the proposed 40 minutes to 30! The dinner was actually starting at 6.30 so there was little chance of it running late but audiences do not generally want to sit through a long speech after a large meal.


Public Speaking Tip #150: If you are speaking after a  dinner consisting of several courses, your speech should not be too long. This is not just because the dinner itself may take a long time but also because audiences may have a limited concentration span after a heavy meal.

Many of the top after dinner speakers actually limit their performances to just 20 minutes - despite the enormous fees they are paid!

Long anecdotes are also best avoided for after dinner speeches unless they are funny all the way through and you are confident of their success.

Sometimes speakers break their own sensible rules - with disastrous consequences. One of mine is to be careful what I eat on the night before a speaking engagement but the previous evening, I succumbed to an item heavily reduced by the supermarket due to it being right on its use-by date. The result was that I spent a great deal of Friday afternoon in the bathroom and set off much later than I wanted to. The couple who were meant to be picking me up at Southampton Parkway station did not have a mobile phone and had, quite understandably, left by the time I arrived so I had to get a taxi to the venue (after paying a hefty commission to use the cashpoint at the station!). As with my experience getting to Three Legged Cross before Christmas, I once again found myself being carried by a foreign taxi driver with little knowledge of a place just a few miles away and certainly no understanding of the British concept of a Village Hall.

We found the place in the end and I felt well enough by then to quickly finish my starter ready for the soup (although I did feel sick at the thought that I had saved about £1 on the Butter Naan from Asda only to knock a £13.50 hole in my fee the following night!)

From now on, I stick to my rule!

Public Speaking Tip #151: Do not take any risks with your health before you have a speaking engagement, for example, by eating foods which may upset you.

This extends to the meal itself if you are speaking at a lunch or dinner. Choose plainer dishes from the menu. Do not drink to excess.

But there were no problems with the meal on this occasion. It was served in the Village Hall by an excellent Southampton caterer called Mr Davis, who this WI always use.

There was a lovely moment afterwards when the Acting President asked us to give the catering staff a round of applause. She mentioned that Mr Davis was seldom seen  as he was always busy in the kitchen. When she said 'Let's see if we can get Mr Davis to come out, shall we?', it did  rather put me in mind of a ventriloquist's act! I was speaking on the Power of Humour in Everyday Life, having delivered My Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer at an afternoon meeting for them about a year ago.

There were 40 at the dinner (including husbands) and I was relieved that seats had been arranged at the far end of the hall for the talk rather than my having to speak in the dining area as the tables were very long and some members of the audience would have been a long way away.

There are a few new press cuttings involving unintentional humour that I am trying out at talks. Two relate to a prolonged local court case and include unfortunate innuendo from defence solicitors (so disastrous, in fact, that you would almost think they were acting for the prosecution!) The first is slightly risqué, the second much more so, and I had made up my mind that I would use the first and decide from the reaction to that one whether to risk the second! The first one got a laugh but not so much of one that I was prepared to use the second so I moved on to different material.

Public Speaking Tip #152: Different audiences have different levels of tolerance for risqué material. You should be able to judge from the response to gentler items how far you can go, If in doubt, cut it out!

I finished off my talk with my tale of the great Quantity Surveyors' Dinner Debacle. There were some questions afterwards and overall it went well but arriving late at a speaking engagement is never a good thing. My thanks to Avis and her husband for running me back to the station afterwards and, once again, my apologies to them for my non-appearance earlier.

Remember, if you see a heavily reduced foodstuff and you know you are speaking somewhere the next day: Just Say No!

Oliver's Battery Women's Group

There were no problems last Monday evening when I caught the train in plenty of time to get to Winchester to speak to the Oliver's Battery Women's Group. This was another return visit after a very long gap (October 1997 being the last time I spoke to them) so I started off by saying that  recently I was appearing at so many groups after absences of many years that I was beginning to feel like the Brigadoon of public speakers! It got a laugh.

The Power of Humour in Everyday Life went very well with the 25 or so ladies there and it was pleasing, once again, to see a group which is stll going strong after all these years. A number of them bought booklets and asked me to sign them.

I have been trying to think if there were any challenges I faced with this one, any points arising, any tips to pass on. Just this one...

Public Speaking Tip #153: Many speaking engagements just go well. There are no problems in terms of the venue or the audience, it's just fun for everybody. Enjoy it!

Dorset Association for the Disabled, Wimborne Branch

On Wednesday, I spoke to 55 members and helpers at the Wimborne minster Branch of the Dorset Association for the Disabled, an organisation with 16 branches throughout the county. I was met at the Allendale Centre by Mr John Slow who I had last seen when he booked me to speak to the Methodist Men's Group in Wimborne last year. He is a great character who does a great deal of speaking himself about his career as a solicitor and, well, let's just say he probably never needs to use a microphone! Due to the nature of this group, I gave careful consideration to my material, omitting a few items and re-wording others. Although I don't use many visuals in Life as a Freelance Comedy Writer (certainly no slides, just a few props that I hold up), with hindsight it might have been better not to have referred to these at all as I later discovered that a couple of their members are visually impaired.

Public Speaking Tip #154: When speaking to a group concerned with disabilities, or indeed any audience where you are aware that some members are disabled, consider whether there is anything in your material which:

a) Excludes them
or
b) May just seem insensitive.

But they were an excellent audience and one member even asked me afterwards if I was the comedy writer who they had heard being interviewed on Radio Solent recently.

This is a very worthwhile and well-run club; delivering a humorous talk for them was a real pleasure.

Newtown Townswomen's Guild

The following evening, I was back at Newtown TG  in Poole, exactly a year after I last spoke to them, this time to deliver my Patrick Campbell talk.

From the moment I arrived at the Alderney Manor Community Centre, I could tell that something was wrong as a few members were waiting outside because there was no admittance through the main doors. Apparently the floor of the room where the TG usually meets had been varnished and it hadn't dried yet. They had only been told about this at 10am that morning and were now meeting in some unfamiliar upstairs room but had to find it first!

I said hello to Sandra Yeoman, Dorset Federation of TGs' Secretary, who I have known for many years, and we all set off along the side of the building, led by a pair of friendly youths who tried to give us some directions - which led us into bar! One of the ladies then assumed that a door off the bar led to the stairs before a barman barked (very rudely, I thought) 'You can't go in there!' We then set off in a different direction, up some very steep, narrow stairs and found the tiny room the TG had been allocated. There was no lift so access was either impossible or at least very difficult for any members with disabilities, the result being that some were not attending.

Now, I have have spoken in some 'cosy' venues over the years, including the living rooms in people's houses, but seldom anywhere like this. Even though there were now less than 20 attending, it was still incredibly cramped and the Committee members had to compete with my props for table space. This room also had no tea-making facilities for the ladies who have loyally booked this venue every month for years.

Public Speaking Tip #155: Sometimes venues are less than ideal but you just have to do your best. At least you're probably being paid to be there - by unfortunate organisations who are also having to pay for a less than adequate venue!

I positioned myself in a corner and began the talk, which went very well, considering the conditions, but then these ladies refused to let the inadequacies of the venue get them down. There is a story in the presentation about an occasion when Patrick Campbell tried to decorate his entire living room in one day in time for when he had guests coming to dinner that evening and, of course, I couldn't resist linking this to a Community Centre which failed to get its floor varnish dry in time for the TG meeting!

Public Speaking Tip #156: If you seize an opportunity to link any material in your presentation in a humorous way to problems with the venue, you are almost guaranteed to get a big laugh.

 

I chatted for a while after the talk and then left them to their business meeting. I didn't think anything else could go wrong for them but the following day Sandra sent me this email:

"Dear Nick,

I thought you might like to know that our evening went from bad to worse after you had left. Just as two of the Community Centre members who were staffing the bar came in to offer us all a drink on the house because of the inconvenience the lights went out. The one emergency light came on which was sufficient for the orders to be taken but Jean had to use a hastily produced torch to read her agenda. We had a message to say the power would be off for at least another hour so we carried on the rest of the meeting in the gloom.The power was still off when we left so negotiating those stairs was a bit tricky for some. Another Centre member appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a lantern which did help but the car park was in darkness.
 
We enjoyed hearing you again and hope it's not too long before we book another visit."

Public Speaking Tip #157: Sometimes the speaker has the easiest part of the meeting!