Acting president Ratan Lele opened the meeting with a report of the club’s recent successes in the area contest, with Raj Jain winning best speaker and progressing to the all-London final on April 9th! On the same evening, club member Glen Long also narrowly missed first place in the speech evaluation contest so a good evening for Bloomsbury all round.
And it was Glen, in his role as the evening’s Toastmaster, who took over the reins from Ratan. Glen gave an overview of the evening’s agenda and explained the basic format of Toastmasters meetings for the benefit of any new visitors.
Swarajit Das introduced the role of Timekeeper by way of an impressively scientific definition of time itself and gave an overview of the green, amber and red “traffic light” system that would be used to keep all participants on schedule.
Prepared speeches
The first speaker was Hari Kalymnios who, despite being a member for just one month, was already delivering his second speech! In a relaxed and humorous speech entitled “British Summer Time”, Hari gave us his top three reasons for loving the onset of the warmer months signalled by the clocks going forward.
Next up was Alex Goldsbrough, giving his No. 5 speech. The fifth speech in the Toastmaster’s speech manual focusses on effective use of body language and hand gestures and in “The Annoyed Cyclist” Alex gave us – in a very funny and animated style – a glimpse into the frustrations of being a keen cyclist in London.
The third and final speech of the evening – also a No. 5 and also bike-themed – was from club secretary Kate Osborne who told, in surprisingly good-humoured fashion, the saga of her long-running struggle to keep her bike (well, a series of bikes) out of the hands of London’s bicycle thieves. Her secret weapon? A tin of pink paint!
Speech evaluations
After the break, each of the three speakers received an evaluation from a Bloomsbury member.
Joyanta Raksmith gave a studied and well-considered evaluation of Hari’s No. 2 speech.
Todd Wade gave a robust evaluation of Alex’s No. 5 speech in his familiar confident and forthright style, challenging Alex to make sure the content of his speech did not play second fiddle to the physicality of the delivery.
And Fabrizio Palmucci gave a distinctive and glowing evaluation of Kate’s No. 5, using a recap of her objectives to demonstrate how well she’d fulfilled the goals of her speech.
Table topics – impromptu speaking
After the prepared speech evaluations, Henry Playfoot took over proceedings and introduced the table topics session, an opportunity for willing volunteers to practice the art of impromptu speaking.
Setting the bar high from the very beginning, Henry took his inspiration from Shakespeare and invited participants to speak for 1 – 2 minutes on classic quotes including:
- “The course of true love never did run smooth”
- “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”
- “Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once”
By the end of the session, eight people – members and guests alike – had taken part and all dealt impressively with Henry’s Bard-themed challenge.
Alex Donald then took on the role of table topics evaluator – no mean feat given the number of participants – and delivered a pithy mini-evaluation for each of the speakers, with many words of encouragement.
Finally, Douglas Williams – of Northern Lights Speakers in Camden – gave a detailed and insightful assessment of everyone that had not yet been evaluated, in his role as general evaluator. He commended the club on its “chilled out” and friendly atmosphere, but also provided specific and helpful recommendations for those who had taken on a role.
Wrapping up the meeting, Ratan Lele presented the awards for the evening – all based on votes from the audience. Best table topics speaker was given to James Hallinan – one of our newest members; best evaluator went to Fabrizio; and best speaker went to Kate. The president’s discretionary award went jointly to Ken, Simon, Imtiaz and Kunwar – the four guests who’d so bravely taken on Henry’s table topics challenge.
The next regular meeting is on Monday 11 April, but before then why not book yourself a place at the Division B International Speech and Evaluation Finals on Saturday 9th April to support Raj Jain?
