Written by Svetlana
Introductions
Bloomsbury Speakers hosted its regular meeting on Monday, 22nd September with the president Jo starting off with an introduction on how, while practice makes perfect, it is perfect practice that really makes a difference; and conditions for that are best at Toastmasters for anyone who genuinely wants to improve their public speaking skills. Constructive evaluation and support as well as learning environment provided here has advantage over practicing among family and friends.
After her introduction, Jo handed the steering of the meeting over to Peter F. The theme of the day chosen by Peter was reality TV shows: what kind of reality shows would participants stage if given a chance? The first functionary, Stella, the Timekeeper’s theme for reality show was simulation of Apollo flight with real equipment from NASA. Stella gave a detailed and quite poetic description of her role and timekeeping rules to speech participants. Grammarian of the evening was Helen who introduced the word of the day “smorgasbord” borrowed by English from Swedish meaning “a range of open sandwiches and delicacies; a wide range of something; a variety of things”. Helen said she expected meeting participants to use the word of the day and she encouraged the use of interesting and beautiful language.
Prepared speeches
The first speaker Svetlana’s idea of reality show was a virtual game with avatars and staging various business scenarios useful for team building in the work setting. Svetlana’s Speech No. 5 “What Can I Do For You?” was humorous and devoted to vodka culture. Her speech contained anecdotes, a historical brief, sayings and expressions summarising the vodka culture. Her speech was received with much laughter and a warm round of applause.
Peter L’s idea of a reality show was to take a bunch of consultants and dump them in a war zone and watch them uncensored. Peter gave his No. 2 speech “Cry Freedom for Holidays” about the importance of holidays in our life. He gave three reasons why he would not swap holidays for anything else, such as money or privileges. Peter’s speech was theatrical and entertaining with lots of action and vocal variety.
Hari’s idea of reality show was to take a group of friends to an exotic island somewhere in Turkey for pure enjoyment. Hari’s advanced entertaining speaker project entitled “One Tough Mudder Fudder” was informative and amusing and described his own experience of the Mudder Fudder challenge. 12 miles of beautiful scenery with difficult terrain full of mud and with 24 obstacles quite painful and extreme to overcome with a reward of an orange head band and beer at the end. Hari’s speech performance contained a lot of movement while he was enacting the description of the challenge.
Joe’s TV reality show was close to what Hari described in his speech about the Mudder Fudder challenge. Joe’s advanced storytelling speech project “A Boy I Have Known” was about a boy called Jacob who had a condition from birth, which was an insatiable appetite, who stayed in a nursery home where Joe’s grandmother was staying too. Despite his condition, Jacob was a very lively and kind, chunky 10-year-old boy who put a smile on every person’s face. The ethos of that nursery home and the values, which people shared, was remarkable. Old and young people got along so well that the memories of it remained as a highlight from childhood throughout Joe’s life.
Before the break, Jon, Sergeant at Arms of the evening, led the guest introductions.
Evaluations
Ahmed, who did not like reality shows, and did not have an idea of his own reality show provided a detailed and useful evaluation of Svetlana’s No. 5 speech. Ahmed commended Svetlana for the use of humour and body language and advised her to use the stage more freely and try and enact her speech even more. She could also improve her eye contact.
Tracey was more interested in music than reality shows. Tracey evaluated Peter L’s No. 2 Speech and commended him for the strong opening, humour, lots of action and vocal variety. Tracey advised Peter L to try and avoid too many repetitions of one reference to a previous speech, which Peter L made.
Bronia evaluated Hari’s advance entertaining speech, commending him for his confident and relaxed manner and for telling something he knew really well, which helped him engage the audience. As advice, she suggested that Hari could include a conflict, an intrigue into his speech to grab the attention of the audience even more and turn it into a story rather than just a vivid description of the Mudder Fudder challenge.
Michelle evaluated Joe’s advance storytelling speech and commended Joe for good structure, content, and emotionally stimulating speech. Michelle advised Joe to better organise his notes and cards in order to avoid long pauses. Overall, the speech reached its objectives and was quite moving.
Table Topics
Swarajit, the Table Topics Master’s idea of a reality show was to take a bunch of celebrities to an island with wild animals and leave them there and not bother about shooting a video. He came up with a number of questions based on the known TV reality shows.
Jo’s question was how she would persuade Simon Cowell to keep her in “X-Factor”. Jo told a real life story of her karaoke performance some years ago in a pub. With a few beers her talent of singing sounded very reassuring to herself, and she thought she sang like a star. She added to the story the fact that Simon Cowell was or could be sitting at a remote table and watching her approvingly. That’s how she would have persuaded him.
Ash’s question was whether she would eat rat’s testicles, based on the reality show “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here”. Ash said she would eat rat’s testicles if there wasn’t anything else to eat and that rat’s testicles were small and probably easier to eat than testicles of other animals.
Rebecca answered a question, how she would justify to her employer, why she should be kept and not fired, based on the TV reality show “The Apprentice”. And Rebecca said she would tell how everybody else was doing badly and thus, destroy the competition in the eyes of her employer.
Lucy answered the question about what were her “Room 101” ideas. Lucy would put what she didn’t need or which was annoying to her, such as her neighbours from downstairs, lots of stuff, some of which she actually needed but didn’t like so much. Finally, she would go to Room 101 herself too.
Oriel answered a question, which was based on “Britain’s Got Talent”, winners of which perform at the Royal Variety show. And the question was, whether the monarchy should be abolished or continued. Oriel said the Royal family were a good tourist attraction and she thought they had pleasant personalities and she thought monarchy should be continued.
Glen provided a very thorough and useful evaluation of Table Topics speakers commending and giving tips to every speaker.
Conclusion
Grammarian Helen delivered a very interesting report on how figures of speech and the word of the day were used by speakers and functionaries throughout the evening, after which Andy, from London Toastmasters, gave a thorough and all-round evaluation providing a lot of pin-pointed and useful advice on how we can improve.
Awards
The best prepared speech award went to Peter for his No. 2 speech. Best evaluator award went to Glen, and best impromptu speech award went to Ash.
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting will be held on Monday, 29th September upstairs at The Clerk & Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.
P.S. Sincere apologies for the stray email headed “Area 34 Humorous Speech & Table Topics contests this Thursday”, which some of you received on the 23rd of September by mistake.
