Written by Svetlana

Introductions

Bloomsbury Speakers hosted its regular meeting on Monday, 22^nd 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, 29^th 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 23^rd of September by mistake.

Written by Svetlana

Introduction

Bloomsbury Speakers hosted its Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest on Monday 8^th September with the president Jo starting off with a quote about laughter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist, and by introducing the Contest Chair Janet, a Bloomsbury Speakers member who knows all about contests having won the club, the area, the district, and winning the honourable third place at the UK and Ireland contest back in May.

The first half was the Humorous Speech section consisting of 3 contestants and the second half was the Table Topics section consisting of 5 contestants.

Humorous Speech Contest

Setting the pace with her speech entitled “Switch Off and Let Go”, Helen reminded us of how important it was to switch off and let go of technology when we are at one with nature. It was a fascinating vivid story of a long weekend walk in the countryside involving losing the path when GPS and mobile phone batteries let them down, getting hungry BUT having a blissful time no matter what. They were rewarded at the end with a free-range chicken dinner in a pub.

The second speaker, Swarajit, previous President of the club, in his speech entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins” offered us a fountain of his unique, sarcastic, dry humour interlaced with anecdotes. He carefully enumerated the seven sins and assured us that every minute of our lives we are an inch away from sinning or even just drowned in it without quite realising it. He went on with naming the sins and providing examples for wrath, sloth, gluttony, and greed mentioning manners, eating habits and even the lifestyles of Hollywood stars. Swarajit’s speech was interrupted with laughter at least 32 times while he maintained his famous friendly and calm half-smile.

The third Speaker was Peter F with his speech entitled “My School Holiday”. Peter took us on a journey to his childhood, exotic with adventures, but so recognizable by games, joys, and battling fears, by laughs of friends at each other and memories of youth, which we could easily connect with. We laughed and we relived his stories with Peter: stealing fruit from farmers’ gardens to have a picnic with boys, running away from the farmer and his toothless dog and then running after the dog and hiding in the bush; being bitten by a snake and pulling the snake off his arm and throwing it far away while everyone else was scared and left him alone. Only the time limit could interrupt us from listening to Peter!

Table Topics Speech Contest

In the second half of the meeting, Janet introduced the table topics contest, where each contestant was required to give a 1-2 minute response to the same question: “If it were biologically possible, should men be chosen to get pregnant?”

Peter F’s opinion as someone who’d witnessed pregnancies and childbirths was not to recommend men to get pregnant and have babies as it was extremely difficult and painful and should only be left to women.

Egor started off with a rhetorical question, why it should not be possible? If attitudes to marriage have changed so much that there are same sex marriages then why shouldn’t one of the partners get pregnant and give birth?

Peter L had contradictory thoughts. On the one hand, men were so adventurous and courageous throughout human history that they should try out pregnancy and childbirth. For instance, he might be too old to go to Mars, but maybe he should be given a chance to become a mother and experience new parenting role of a father-mother.

Jo’s take on the question was that she as a woman had a choice to be or not to be pregnant; and how wonderful and bizarre that experience was. For the sake of fairness, she said, men too should have that choice.

Joe chose to praise women to the skies for the role of bringing humans into this world. But he was equally immensely happy for all men that they do not have to do this and it should stay like that.

Results

When the judges’ ballots had been counted and checked, drum rolls were provided by the audience and with suspense built up by the chief judge Ayse the results were announced.

In the Table Topics Speech Contest:

• Third place went to Joe
• Second place went to Peter L
• First place went to Jo

In the Humorous Speech contest, only the first place was announced, which went to Swarajit.

The Next Round – Area 34 Contest

Congratulations to all our contestants and particularly to Swarajit and Jo who will now go on to represent the club at the Area 34 contest on Thursday, 25^th September at 55 Broadway (directly above St. James’s Park tube station), SW1H 0BD.

Please go along and show your support! Registration is required at the following web page: area34contests.eventbrite.co.uk.

Next Meeting

Our next regular meeting will be held on Monday, 22^nd September, upstairs at The Clerk & Well pub, 156 Clerkenwell Road, EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.