Club President Nazia Soon welcomed everyone to the meeting in her familiar warm and friendly style and then handed over proceedings to the Toastmaster for the evening, seasoned speaker and Holborn regular Ratan Lele.
Ratan introduced the evening’s theme of “the gift of the gab” and invited all of the prepared speakers to tell us whether they felt they had it, and if not, what they’d do if they did!
Timekeeper Fabrizio Palmucci and Harkmaster Swarajit Das explained their roles in an entertaining and illuminating fashion and prepared the way for the main body of the meeting.
The prepared speeches were kicked off in great style with an impressive icebreaker speech from brand new member Simon Abbott entitled “How music has helped me throughout my career”.
Then Raj Jain used his first advanced speech as an opportunity to explain, in a brilliantly clear and accessible style, the basics of hedge funds. This was a subject that most people present admitted they didn’t really understand and Raj did a great job of making us all feel a little more informed. He even managed to make “short selling” sound simple!
The third speaker, Glen Long did his earnest best to persuade us all to read one of his favourite books: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Relating the story of how he first came across the book during a five month trip to India and SE Asia he told us how he felt this book about travel and adventure could inspire any of us to be more adventurous in our own lives.
Finally, Todd Wade gave a fascinating and sobering insight into the hidden perils of owning a retail loyalty card with his speech “The price of loyalty”. Giving us a privileged insider view of three of the less-well-known – and less positive – aspects of these popular schemes, Todd certainly persuaded many of us to reconsider our own shopping habits.
Valuable feedback was given on the four speeches during insightful evaluations by Nazia Soon, Henry Playfoot, Anna Maloney and Rekha Wadhwani respectively.
After a short break, proud new father Guy Smith (congratulations Guy!) ran a lively Royal Engagement-themed table topics session where he invited guests and members alike to take on the role of both key government figures and senior royals to give impromptu speeches about some particular aspect of this forthcoming big event in the House of Windsor.
Club sponsor and distinguished Toastmaster Liz Hobbs evaluated the various table topics speakers, setting the bar rather high for any future club members taking on that role!
After final reports from Fabrizio on speech timings, Swarajit in his role as Harkmaster rewarded the most attentive among the audience with chocolates for correctly answering questions about details of the main speeches.
Finally Holborn regular (and recent table topics winner at the recent UK and Ireland contest in Dublin!) David Jones provided a general evaluation of the whole evening in his inimitable humorous and constructive style.
When the audience votes were collected and counted, Todd Wade was announced as the winner of the prepared speeches with Alex Goldsbrough and David Jones as joint table topics winners. Congratulation to all!
The next club meeting is a special table topics workshop on Monday 6th December with some useful tips for those nervous about impromptu speaking and plenty of opportunities to practice in a safe and friendly environment.
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