There were lots of new faces in the audience at this week’s regular meeting, always a welcome sight since any Toastmasters club – particularly a new one like ours – thrives on getting new people to participate.

Club president Nazia Soon welcomed regular members and guests to the meeting and warmed everyone up with some thoughts inspired by the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

First time Toastmaster Alex Goldsbrough set the agenda for the evening in a warm and lively fashion and before very long we were into the prepared speeches.

The first speech of the evening was a number two speech by Joyanta Raksmith who told us all how the twin forces of decision and indecision had affected his life to date.

This was followed by another number two speech, this time by Fabrizio Palmucci, who gave us all a valuable lesson in the art bargaining, with his three top tips for getting a better deal at the market, at work and with your partner!

Bravely stepping in to replace a speaker who unfortunately had to drop out at the last minute, Nazia Soon gave an advanced speech from the storytelling manual about the early life of Buddha.

Finally, club regular Rekha Wadhwani told us all about her habit of setting physical challenges for herself every year and with the help of visual aids told the story of this year’s challenge, a 5K walk.

After a short break for a quick catch-up and some refreshments, Toastmaster Alex restarted the meeting, with evaluations being the first item on the second half of the agenda. Spirited and insightful evaluations of the four speeches were provided by Kate Osborne, Glen Long, Todd Wade, and Raj Jain.

This was followed by a fun and varied table topics session run by Raj Jain during which willing volunteers were invited to answer questions as diverse as “I haven’t had a raise, should I fire my boss?” to “My neighbour has a terrible singing voice how should I tell him?”

We were very pleased to see several guests opting to speak and giving even experienced speakers a run for their money. All of the impromptu speeches were then evaluated by Ratan Lele in his trademark humorous and efficient style.

When all of the votes cast during the evening were counted, the best speech award went to Fabrizio, best evaluator to Kate, and best table topic to first-time guest Jacqueline. Well done everyone!

Manuela Piscioneri, from the Women in Banking & Finance Speakers Club in Canary Wharf, was our General Evaluator for the evening and provided some great feedback for everyone who’d played a role but had not yet received an evaluation. May thanks Manuela.

All in all a great meeting and we hope to see a good number of the visiting guests at meetings in the future.

On 16th October 2010, Glen Long from Bloomsbury Speakers achieved an outstanding result in the London-wide 2010 Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest, coming second (out of seven) in both categories.

Congratulations on coming second in the contest, Glen!

Thanks Alex!

Where did you get the inspiration for your ‘Three Little Pigs’ story?

I can’t remember the exact inspiration but in general I do like the idea of putting a new or modern twist on a well-known character or story. You get a lot of context “for free” because people are already familiar with the basic setup and when it comes to writing the speech you’re not starting from nothing, you’ve got the original story for inspiration.

Run me through what your thoughts and feelings were in the moments before, during and after your humorous speech.

Well, I was the very last speaker so I had plenty of time to get nervous watching all the other speakers!

It might sound a bit strange but I actually relaxed a bit after I heard Adolfo Tunon’s speech (the ultimate winner). It was a very physical speech (about combining his passion for Toastmasters with his passion for running) which went down deservedly well with the audience and I remember thinking to myself: “however well my speech goes, I would be very happy to be beaten by that guy”.

When I was actually up on stage, I was quite nervous but it was also a real buzz. When I finished, I thought that it had gone down quite well, but I had a niggling feeling I’d left something out of the speech. When I sat back down and worked out what it was, I was quite annoyed with myself. But I don’t think most of the audience noticed.

You certainly deserved to do well. How can I be as funny as you?

Wow – how do I answer that? I think being funny is partly about having a brain that naturally works a certain way – looking for unusual angles and connections – but also just about spending time to explore a topic for comic possibilities.

I would say it’s also definitely worth running ideas or early drafts past friends and family, because what you find funny might not always work for other people.

You also came second in the Table Topics contest and you spoke on the unrehearsed topic of “Big Society”. What was going through your mind?

I was still on a bit of a high from the prepared speech contest and frankly eager to get back in front of the audience (it’s dangerously addictive!)

When I was walking up to the stage and the topic of “Big Society” was announced, the very first thought I had was of a literally big society – i.e. one with an obesity problem, and I thought I could probably get some comic mileage out of that.

I find Table Topics the most challenging part of Toastmasters because you have to think on the spot. How did you make it look so easy?

I would say just try to make a very clear decision about how you’re going to tackle the topic before you start to speak.

Don’t get too caught up in trying to come up with something clever or unusual because you only have a few seconds to think. Just go with the most obvious idea that comes into your head and commit to it.

Yes it’s true, some people can just start talking, discover a genius idea along the way and then tie it all together at the end, but most of us aren’t that lucky.

And don’t worry about being too obvious. What’s obvious to you isn’t always obvious to everyone else, so it’ll still seem fresh and interesting.

Will we be seeing you at next year’s contest?

I hope so! I’m hooked now and I’ll definitely be putting some thought into a speech for next year’s competition.

My friend is thinking of joining Toastmasters but finds the notion of speaking in front of others terrifying! Any words of advice?

Join! Your friend is exactly the sort of person that would benefit most from joining Toastmasters (and particularly from joining a very friendly, relaxed club like Bloomsbury Speakers!)

He or she will quickly overcome those nerves in a safe, supportive environment, speaking in front of people who probably felt the same way not so long ago. In my relatively short time at Toastmasters I have seen people make amazing progress with their speaking and have a lot of fun along the way.

Within a few weeks of joining Toastmasters, I guarantee that your friend will look back upon their previous terror of public speaking, and wonder what all the fuss was about!

(Interview by Alex Donald)

It was another fun evening and a full agenda at Bloombury Speakers with four prepared speeches and half a dozen impromptu “table topics”.

Swarajit Das kicked off the prepared speeches with a confident and entertaining icebreaker entitled “Three things you will hate about me” in which he explained that his tricky name, his pseudo-vegetarianism (well, pescatarianism) and his tendency to be pedantic might make it easy for people to dislike him. But this was of course all a humorous conceit and he came across as a very likeable chap.

Next, Adam Horne entertained us all with a speech which set out his one-man campaign against WMDs – which in this case meant “work mobile devices”. He very convincingly put the case that out-of-hours mobile phone usage was eating into our spare time and affecting our quality-of-life. “Watch Me Demonstrate” (another WMD) said Adam as he switched his own phone off at the start.

Next Alex Goldsbrough introduced us to the concept of Snow-Fu – otherwise known as the three vital lessons he learned from a drunken (!) ski instructor about how to teach children to ski. Great fun and useful for anyone who wants to fast track their children’s skills on the slopes.

Finally Raj Jain, completing his number 10 speech, inspired us all to adopt his two golden rules for succeeding in life “without being a geek”. Congratulations to Raj for completing the ten speech programme and officially becoming a Competent Communicator!

Insightful evaluations, were provided by Alex Donald, Femi Asaolu, Jane Liburd and Henry Playfoot.

In a lively table topics session, Kate gave six of us the opportunity to become agony aunts, providing useful and insightful advice to people with problems ranging from a boyfriend reluctant to propose, to a mother jealous of her globetrotting son. Ratan evaluated everyone’s performance in his inimitable style balancing humour and insight like the seasoned Toastmaster he is.

He also did a fine job as acting president in the absence of Bloomsbury president Nazia, and Dave Longley kept the proceedings moving along at a great pace as the evening’s Toastmaster.

After a full evening Ratan announced the results the voting – best speech to Raj, best evaluation to Henry and best table topics to Adam. Congratulations to all!

In wrapping up the meeting Ratan urged all present to sign-up for a morning of high-value workshops followed by the Division B Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest (in which Bloomsbury member Glen Long will be representing Area 34!) this Saturday 16th October – more information and booking available at http://divisionb.eventbrite.com/.

This should be a great session with much learning and laughing to be done – which, after all, is what Bloomsbury is all about after all!

Last night we had a great turnout for our first ever Humorous Speech and Table Topics contest, and a strong field of contestants.

Nazia Soon, Craig Reid, Ratan Lele and Glen Long competed in the humorous speech category with prepared speeches covering topics as diverse as the differences between men and women, procrastination, the battle to get a “six pack” and a “rebooting” a popular children’s story.

In the table topics category our competitors were Glen Long, Craig Reid, Femi Asaolu, Ratan Lele, Henry Playfoot, Rekha Wadhwani and Marta Costas. They were each invited by Contest Chair (and part-time Fairy Godmother!) Liz Hobbs to tell us all what they would choose if granted one magical wish.

It was a very close run contest, but when all the ballots were in, the results were as follows:

Humorous Speech
First place: Glen Long. Second place: Ratan Lele

Table Topics
First place: Glen Long. Second place: Henry Playfoot, Third place: Rekha Wadhwani

Many thanks to those members from other clubs who helped out as judges and ballot counters.