Category: Comedy

Sisterhood – the Brit-Kiwi Comedy

A couple of years back I was fortunate enough to appear in a film. Now, after a Hollywood film festival this past summer, it’s now got a limited cinema release next month at the Odeon in Panton Street, just off Leicester Square. I don’t have one of the starring roles, I do appear right at …

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Humorous Speech Workshop

I ran a humorous speech workshop at my Toastmasters club Grosvenor Square Speakers last night. It’s a little bit difficult in London at the moment because the majority of the workshops for this contest season happened on the same day. There were others I wanted to attend, but had my own to run…

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Public Speaking: Table Topics Tips

I’ve been thinking about one of my favourite forms of theatre – the Commedia dell’ Arte and I think there are some important lessons for us to take away for our table topics sessions at Toastmasters. Brief bit of history; in Western theatre there have been two traditions, the scripted and memorised and the improvised. …

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Writing a Winning Humorous Speech

The London Speaker blog has just posted an interview with Jonathan Palmer last year’s Divison B Humorous Speech winner. It’s a really good and revealing article. Palmer talks about why he didn’t make the grade and win the contest at District (National) level. It’s a key distinction.

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How do you know your jokes are funny?

There seems to be an obvious answer to the above question – how do you know your jokes are funny? Surely, you tell someone, or an audience, a joke and they laugh then it’s funny. Great. Simple and straight-forward. Especially if you have preparation time.

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