Club President Nazia Soon opened the meeting by recounting the history of Toastmasters and how it was founded. This was particularly of benefit for the guests for some of whom it was their first experience of a Toastmasters meeting.
Former Holborn President Ratan Lele was our very capable Toastmaster and he oversaw the evening with his unique brand of humor. His theme of dreams was used to introduce each speaker and gave us an insight into the speaker’s aspirations.
The first speaker Joyanta Raksmith delivered his number three speech from the Competent Communicator manual. Joyanta spoke about his frustration and anger with big corporations and how his favourite film helped him to deal with this. Joyanta’s favourite film The Shawshank Redemption taught him some important lessons about friendship and human interactions.
Our second speaker was Fabrizio Palmucci, giving his number 4 speech. Fabrizio gave an entertaining speech entitled Animal Talks. He cleverly wove metaphors, similes and sayings into his story about his day with unique and original use of the English language to illustrate his points in a fun and light-hearted speech.
Adam Horne then took to the stage with another number 4 speech. Adam’s speech about “tube education” used rhetoric effectively by giving us three ways of educating ourselves whilst traveling on the tube: business skills such as negotiating for a seat, sports skills such as pole dancing to keep fit and appreciation of art by enjoying “poems on the underground” and the colours of the advertisements!
Our last speaker was a guest speaker from Berkeley Square Speakers – Chris Dunn, delivering his number 5 speech. Chris gave an accomplished performance using body language to great effect in his speech about three significant milestones in his life, and it won Chris the Best Prepared Speech award.
After the break the speeches were evaluated by Kate Osborne, Nazia Soon, Femi Asaolu and Ratan Lele respectively. Femi won the Best Evaluator award for suggesting that Adam use more stage time and cut down on his material to develop his ideas – valuable feedback that will help Adam to improve.
The Table Topics session was run by Alex Goldsbrough, who had chosen Dreams as his theme. It was an imaginative theme that resulted in some rather eclectic impromptu speeches and some good humour. The session was ultimately won by Kate Osborne for her account of a lucid dream she had had the previous night and how her boyfriend’s snoring was in fact the noise in the dream!
The Table Topics speakers were then evaluated by Swarajit Das, who did a great job of evaluating the speakers and giving them valuable feedback on their performance, many of whom were guests and spoke in front of an audience for the first time – a valuable experience for them.
Alex Donald was the Harkmaster of the evening and he had chosen “enamoured” as the word of the day, an appropriate choice for Valentine’s Day! He promised us a reward for using the word most creatively and a box of chocolates was awarded to guest Brendan for his imaginative use of “enamoured”. Our listening skills were tested further with questions about the speeches of the evening and we were rewarded with more chocolates in a light-hearted and fun session.
The evening was brought to a close by General Evaluator Andrew Bennett from Berkeley Square Speakers, who encouraged all members to achieve their DTM (Distinguished Toast Master). He provided a thorough and helpful evaluation for the club in a supportive and encouraging evaluation in true Toastmasters spirit.
