Written by Elena Fanaberova (edited by Swarajit Das)

Introduction

This meeting was a must-see! There was a full house made up of club members, regular guests and many new faces. There was also general theme of humour and comedy, which meant that the meeting was loaded with jokes from start to finish!

The meeting was opened by Club President Glen Long who welcomed the new guests and gave an overview of Toastmasters’ learning-by-doing ethos.

The Toastmaster of the evening who guided us through the agenda was Club Treasurer Swarajit Das. He encouraged the audience to tell jokes during the meeting and introduced every speaker to the stage with their favourite joke, which made atmosphere relaxed and stimulated for speaking. Swarajit was assisted by the Timekeeper Joe Lake and the Grammarian Stella Meadows, a guest from the Northern Lights Speakers club in Camden, who introduced word of the day – tandem – while the club’s Sergeant at Arms Adam Horne led the guest introductions.

Prepared speeches

It is always a great pleasure for the club to have an Ice Breaker speech during a meeting and this evening Swarajit introduced brand new member of the club, Richard Gibbs, to give his. It’s an important step in the Toastmaster’s programme and in his very humorous first speech entitled “Favourite Holidays” Richard compared and contrasted his regular holidays in Devon, where he enjoys countryside walks, sitting by the bonfire and listening to the sound of rain, with a holiday in Sri Lanka with his wife where he was shocked by driving without rules, was hit by an elephant and even tried out jet skiing.

The second speaker was Elena Fanaberova, who delivered her No. 2 speech “I like shopping here”. Elena compared her shopping experience in Russia where you can risk freezing your hands while shopping at outdoor markets in the winter, with shopping in the UK where sellers seem to care much more about their customers and offer great deals such as “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” – something that would be unheard of in a Russian market.

The next speaker was VP of Membership and Mentoring Hari Kalymnios, who appeared to have many fans at the meeting, with his speech No. 6 entitled “I can make you”. In this entertaining speech Hari spoke about his experience of being put into a trance by a CD and book called “Instant Confidence”, using vocal variety to represent different subjects.

The last speaker was Jennifer Zou, a visiting member from London Corinthians club, with her advanced speech entitled “A Red Flower”. Jennifer told us a very sensitive story about a small girl who asked her mum “Why do people wear poppies?”

Speech evaluations

Evaluation is a crucial part of our meetings for speakers because they are able to receive recommendations for further improvements. It is also a good opportunity for evaluators to enhance their critical and communication skills and for the rest of the audience to learn about both of these areas.

The first evaluator Femi Asaolu evaluated Richard’s very engaging Ice Breaker speech. He reminded us that the objective of the Ice Breaker speech is to discover speaking skills that the speaker already has and areas where improvements could be made. Femi commented that the speech was honest and personal, which is what the first speech should be like, and that Richard already has a great joke-telling skill. Femi also suggested focusing more on body language in the future.

The next evaluator was relatively new member Ann Connolly and she evaluated Elena’s No. 2 speech. She commented that the speech had been well prepared with smooth transitions. Ann recommended that Elena should speak a little bit louder.

The third evaluator Henry Playfoot evaluated Hari’s exceptional No. 6 speech, the aim of which was to apply vocal variety. He commented that Hari had had a very powerful stage presence and his message was congruent with its delivery. Henry pointed out an area for improvement – making more use of pauses.

The last evaluator was Todd Wade who evaluated Jennifer’s advanced speech. The goal of her touching story was to invoke emotions. Todd commented that the goal had been met and emphasised Jennifer’s exceptional story-telling and vocal variety, for example when the child spoke to her mother. He made one suggestion: to walk around the stage more.

Table Topics

Participating in Table Topics (impromptu speaking) is great practice for both new and experienced members as well as brave guest volunteers.

The Topics Master of the evening was club Secretary Kate Osborne. She prepared humorous Table Topics for the evening, which was in a friendly “tandem” with the general theme of the meeting chosen by Swarajit. Her questions for the speakers were:

• If you were prime minister for the day, what would you implement in order to give people in London a laugh?
• Tell us about something funny that happened to you or your friend whilst you on holiday.
• Tell us about something funny that happened when you were growing up.
• Mixing alcohol and text messaging should be banned – your comments.
• Tell us about a funny film or book that you have seen or read recently.
• Have you ever made a fool of yourself or embarrassed yourself in public?

Six people including a few guests tackled one of Kate’s questions and got some great experience of thinking on their feet.

The Table Topics evaluator this evening was Ratan Lele who incorporated a lot of humour in his evaluation and commented on each participant. His recommendations, common for all speakers, were to stand a little bit closer to the audience, smile and try to answer the question asked.

Our General Evaluator was Trang Le, who is a member of four other clubs! Trang gave a very constructive evaluation of all the meeting participants who were yet to be evaluated and expressed her positive experience of visiting our club.

Awards

Closing the meeting, Glen gave out the awards based on the votes cast during the evening and one President’s discretionary award.

The Best Evaluator award went to Ratan for his very humorous Table Topics evaluation, the Best Table Topics speaker award went to Todd for his brilliant topic about banning alcohol-induced text messages and the highly-coveted Best Speaker award went to Hari for his exceptional speech about confidence.

Richard was presented with a certificate for successfully completing his Icebreaker speech – an important landmark for any Toastmaster.

Finally the President’s discretional award went to Ann for her first and very successful evaluation.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on Monday 28th November at The Rugby Tavern.

Make sure you put Monday 12th December in your diary as well – it’s our Christmas-themed meeting and we’ve already got lots of fun ideas for seasonal speaking!