Happy New Year to readers of this blog. I still have a number of speaking engagements from late 2009 to tell you about, starting with a repeat booking for

The Probus Club of the New Forest

On 1 September I spoke for the second time to the Probus Club of the New Forest at Shorefield Country Park near Milford-on-Sea. This engagement had actually been scheduled for November but a few days earlier I had received a call from the speaker booked for their September meeting to ask if we could swap dates as he wasn't going to be able to make it due to personal circumstances. I agreed to this and so found myself delivering my talk on Groucho Marx two months earlier than anticipated.

As with my previous booking, their business meeting was very humorous but this time it was marred by problems with their microphone. As I was listening and preparing to be introduced, I was leafing through a collection of Groucho Marx's letters and came across one from his friend the great comic Fred Allen who wrote reminding Groucho of a joke about a man saying grace inaudibly. I realised that this gag about struggling to hear a speaker would be a fantastically appropriate one to start my talk with after those PA problems - and I was right! It got a huge laugh and the rest of the presentation went really well (needless to say, I didn't use that mic!)

The vote of thanks was particularly appreciative because I had helped them out at such short notice by switching dates.

Afterwards, I enjoyed lunch with the 50-or-so members present and, like before, the conversation was very interesting, with one gentleman telling me about a dinner he had been to where a famous TV satirical quiz team captain was the guest speaker and spent the duration of that meal finding out all that he could about the organisation and those present in order to finalise his 40 minutes of tailored content - all of it on cards with just the briefest of one-line notes!

My thanks to Rod Keene for help with transportation from New Milton station and back.

Here is an extract from the letter I received afterwards from David Banks, their Speaker Secretary:

"It does not seem like a week ago when you spoke to us about Groucho Marx et al but you know how much we enjoyed your talk and how grateful we are for swopping your date....Thanks again and again for all you did for us".

They're a super club and I was glad that I could help them and the other speaker out. There was just one problem, though. I normally try and take bookings in such a way that they are distributed throughout the year. Some months are very busy, others a bit quieter, but there are usually at least a couple of engagements each month but that booking had been the only one that I had scheduled for November and, as nothing else came in at short notice, I found myself, for the first time in nearly five years, with a calendar month with no speaking engagements at all (in fact, there have only ever been four months like that throughout the whole of my 14-year speaking career).

Public Speaking Tip #349: If you help out an organisation that has booked you by switching dates at their request then, as with speaking at very short notice, they will be most appreciative. You should, however, bear in mind that this may affect the balance of your diary of engagements.

But then maybe if I had spoken to them at the later date that rogue microphone wouldn't have been playing up and so I wouldn't have used that Fred Allen story to such great effect!