RIP Sir Clement Freud, laid-back speaker

Over on my other blog, Freelance Comedy Writer, I have posted an entry about the recent death of the broadcaster and wit Sir Clement Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst, Sigmund. It includes an anecdote about his brilliant opening remarks during a challenging after dinner speech.

In his autobiography Freud Ego, he recalled another difficult speaking engagement, this time during his (successful) campaign to become elected as a Liberal MP in 1973. He was addressing an audience of railway workers who were staunch Labour supporters but he still managed to extract a laugh by saying he had something in common with them as his grandfather was Signalman Freud!

The thing about Clement Freud was that he got laughs partly through having such a laid-back, in fact, lugubrious delivery. In his case, it had become his trademark but the rest of us have to work at being a bit more outgoing!

In my early days as a speaker, I certainly got laughs, compliments and repeat bookings but these often seemed to happen despite my delivery rather than because of it. I started with the enormous advantage of strong, original, well-structured material and good comic timing, thanks to six years' experience of writing for national radio topical comedy shows (and I had been winning humour-writing contests in national publications and on TV for eight years before that) but there was very little personality in the way I put this material across - as a couple of local newspaper reviews of my early stand-up comedy were at pains to point out! And although I passed all my LAMDA public speaking exams with very good marks, my examiners always advised that there was room for improvement where the use of my voice was concerned.

So I stopped thinking that my content was enough to carry me through and started working on putting more personality into my delivery. It took some time; often I would think I was coming across as totally over-the-top in front of some audience only to listen to the recording I had made (highly recommended for improving your delivery) and hear something little better than a dull monotone!

But, gradually, it all started coming together, helped in no small measure by my getting an Equity card. (I blogged about the positive effect this had on my performances here). Nowadays, the voice on those early recordings is barely recognisable. I am also a lot more physically outgoing when I give presentations.

I sometimes feel a bit sorry for my early audiences but every speaker has to learn somewhere; in any event, most of them have rebooked me, sometimes many times, so they have (I hope!) been able to see and hear the improvement in my delivery over the years.

Public Speaking Tip #310: Very few speakers can consistently get by solely on the strength of good material. It usually has to be combined with enthusiastic and energetic delivery for maximum effect.