We had a good turnout for our very last meeting of the year, which was held in the London Welsh Centre on Gray’s Inn Road. Arrivals were greeted by Christmas music and some seasonal nibbles laid on by our “Chief Elf” Kate Osborne and her “little helper” Elena Fanaberova.

Introductions

Club President Glen Long opened the meeting by welcoming everyone in the room and likening the venue to a stable which had given the club shelter for the evening at this busy time of year. Glen gave an overview of Toastmasters for the benefit of guests and explained how practicing your public speaking in a safe and friendly environment can help reduce anxiety levels and allow natural communication skills to emerge.

He then handed over to the evening’s Toastmaster, Henry Playfoot, who described the evening’s agenda as a “Christmas feast” and took us though the various elements of the programme. He also introduced his theme for the meeting – favourite Christmas songs – and invited the evening’s Timekeeper Neil Ward up to speak, whose own favourite turned out to be Silent Night.

Neil gave us an overview of his role – to help meeting participants keep to time – and explained the green, amber and red “traffic light” system used to set time limits for each part of the agenda.

After Neil has finished his section, new member Richard (favourite song “Don’t Let The Bells End” by The Darkness) stood up and explained his role as the meeting’s Grammarian – to “encourage and commend the good use of English language” by the various speakers, but also to pick up on poor grammar and filler words such as and “ums and ahs”. He revealed the word of the day – “festive” – and encouraged all members to incorporate it into their speeches and introductions.

Prepared Speeches

Henry then introduced our first speaker, AG (favourite song “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty McColl) who was giving her No. 2 speech entitled “The Lazy Consumer”. In a very well-structured and informative speech she explored the question of why consumers often don’t make choices that seem to be plainly in their best interests – is it simply because they are lazy? In fact, she concluded, there are a number of good reasons, including what price they put on their own time.

The second speaker was Hari, whose favourite Christmas song is “Happy Christmas War Is Over” by John Lennon. In his seventh speech “Beliefs and Stockings” Hari used a childhood story about trying to catch his parents in the act of filling his Christmas stocking (and thus proving the non-existence of Father Christmas once and for all) as the entry point to a speech about beliefs and how these affect our behaviour and ultimately our success and happiness. He likened the “references” that support our beliefs to the legs of a table that support the table top and invited us all to think what new beliefs we could adopt.

The third speaker was club president Glen Long (favourite song “Let It Snow!”), with a No. 9 speech entitled “Warning: May Contain Nuts”. In his tongue-in-cheek festive speech, Glen attempted to persuade us that there were compelling reasons to abandon the traditional Christmas turkey in favour of a meat that was more ethical, more sustainable and even free – the humble squirrel! Say ‘no’ to turkey and ‘yes to Tufty he urged.

Visiting from Northern Lights Speakers in Camden, our final speaker Doug Williams, delivered an advanced informative speech entitled: “Causes of Ill-Health”. In a thought-provoking speech Doug asked us to question the true intentions of pharmaceutical companies and invited us all to take responsibility for our own health by looking closely at the lifestyle decisions we make every day.

Evaluations

After a short break to recharge our glasses and feast on a few festive nibbles, Henry reconvened the meeting and introduced the next section – evaluations of the four speakers.

Regular visitor to Bloomsbury Speakers Jennifer Zou evalauted AG’s speech “The Lazy Consumer”. She commended AG on her structure – satisfying one of the main objectives of the No. 2 speech – and the way she signposted key points. She also commended good use of hand gestures and eye contact but recommended more variety of pace.

Hari’s speech was evaluated by Joe Lake who noted that the content had been drawn from various sources and commended his “excellent posture” and the way Hari had projected his voice to the very back of the room. His recommendations were to vary the vocal variety to be more impactful and also to simplify the content – Joe felt Hari was trying to achieve too many things in one speech.

Glen’s speech was evaluated by Ratan Lele. Ratan commended Glen on a firm stance and good eye contact and said he found himself being convinced by the speech despite feeling “nauseous” at the prospect of eating squirrel instead of turkey! Ratan felt that Glen could have spent more time in his speech looking at other alternatives to turkey before settling on his controversial choice, but promised to consider eating squirrel on Christmas Day, albeit with a pinch of salt!

Femi Asaolu was tasked with evaluating Doug’s advanced speech. Opening with a quote, Femi noted it was clear that Doug cared about his topic passionately and this served to make us seriously think about the points he raised. Femi recommended that Doug might have signposted some of his points more clearly and should perhaps have gone to greater lengths to substantiate his main arguments.

Table Topics

After the evaluations, Kate led a lively table topics sessions with a Christmas twist! Volunteers were invited to put on a Christmas hat, take a shot of cherry brandy, and then pull a cracker – hidden inside each cracker was a special topic to tackle.

In fact, each was asked to give an impromptu “Elf Report” from a particular location or event, resulting in:

• Paula reporting from the family lunch on Christmas Day
• John reporting from the office Christmas party
• Jem reporting from Westfield Shopping Centre on Christmas Eve
• Bithika reporting from the school nativity play
• Sandra reporting from Santa’s Grotto
• Doug reporting on a local Christmas Eve party

After the final cracker had been pulled, Todd Wade stepped up as table topics evaluator with the challenge of giving feedback to all six impromptu speakers. He commended all of them for a “fantastic” session where they all “hit their beats” and went on to give specific praise and recommendations to each in turn.

Reports and awards

As Grammarian, Richard gave his report, citing numerous examples of good uses of language, such as Henry’s description of the agenda as being full of “titbits and tasty morsels”. He also commended Doug for his good use of repetition in his speech.

Finally, highly experienced Toastmaster Liz Hobbs gave a general evaluation of the evening and the club as a whole, with a number of useful recommendations for the club and those participants who’d not yet received feedback.

Closing the meeting, Glen announced the awards based on votes from the audience. Best table topics speaker went to Doug for his report on a local party and best evaluator to Joe for his evaluation of Hari’s speech. Glen’s squirrel speech got the most votes in the prepared speech ballot, but he chose not present himself with an award on the basis that it would be embarrassing! The president’s discretionary award went to guest Sandra for her sterling table topics performance.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting is also the first meeting of the New Year – on Monday 9th January.

This meeting will also be the first in our new venue – downstairs in The Real Man Pizza Company on Clerkenwell Road. It’s only five minutes walk from the Rugby Tavern and we’ve got a great room with an integral bar that the manager has promised to open at the end of the meeting.

It’s an exciting new chapter for Bloomsbury Speakers and we look forward to seeing you there.

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!