Jul 16

Hungry for Humorous Speeches? Try a Roast

I was idly playing videos on You Tube recently and I came across Dean Martin’s Roasts from the 1970s. I had a jolly old time watching some comedians from yesteryear engaging in humorous roasts. So I figured I should write a post about roasts and provide some roast speech examples. Although I talk about them in the Toastmasters context, the advice is absolutely applicable whether you’re giving a Toastmasters roast or not.

You can sometimes forget the skill of some of the old school comedians when they’re either a) not on TV so much anymore, b) Recognisable through films that aren’t really shown that much like The Cannonball Run or the original Ocean’s Eleven, c) they’re dead d) all of the above.

You can also see this basic concept at work at the White House Correspondence Dinner.
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Jul 14

Secret Comedy Writing Technique – Callbacks

Here’s another post in my on-going series Secret Comedy Writing Techniques. This one deals with Callbacks. What’s a callback you ask? Well, a callback is repeating a joke verbatim, or paraphrasing a joke, that got a laugh earlier in your speech or comedy routine. Continue reading

Jul 03

Toastmasters: Evaluation Workshop

I attended an Evaluation Workshop given by the current UK & Ireland Evaluation Champion Hilary Briggs (Early Bird Speakers) and the 2004 winner and DTM, Bob Ferguson (Excaliburs). By the way, if you check out that link Hilary is on the left of the picture.

In the UK the Toastmasters Evaluation Contest happens at the same time as the International Speech Contest. I don’t believe that this is the case in other countries.

What these two Toastmasters giants don’t know about giving effective evaluations isn’t worth knowing quite frankly. Continue reading

Jun 15

Public Speaking: Playing a Large Audience, part 2

This is a follow-up to my recent post about my M.C.-ing job. Unfortunately, even though I’d heard that the show was pretty much a sell-out, most of the audience didn’t turn up. However, I still opened the show with the energy and professionalism as if there were 750 people.

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Jun 13

Public Speaking: Playing a Large Audience

I’ve got an M.C.-ing job tomorrow night at the Ashcroft Theatre in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon. It’s for a charity called Living Water Satisfies. The Ashcroft is a 750-seater theatre and is the largest that I recall playing. Even in my days as a theatre actor I think the most I’ve performed to was around the 200 mark.

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