Toastmasters Mystery Speaking – The Hidden Benefits, part 3

“Hi diddly dee, a mystery speaker’s life for me” – okay, that doesn’t quite scan but I don’t claim to be Lennon & McCartney. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to be a mystery speaker for the Women in Banking and Finance Speakers. Even though I’m not in Banking or Finance and I’m not a woman, it was nice to be one of the token two male speakers there.

We were in a nice-looking boardroom and therein lay my biggest problem of the evening

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The 32 Most Influential Stand-up Comedians of All Time

The 32 Most Influential Comedians of All Time – I’m aware that writing such a post may alienate a certain portion of my readers, but what you have to remember is any such list is subjective. You might not find one of these comedians funny and you may want a completely different bunch of people listed.

These performers have all been key voices in the solo comedy artform during the 20th and 21st Centuries. As a result of that, I wanted to be able to list them here on my blog because, sometimes on lists such as these, a comedian can be left off. Remember, this is my list of influential comedians. It’s not the final word on the subject.

Some of these names you may have heard of, some you may be hearing for the first time. Each is important in his/her own way in helping to advance and shape comedy and influence all those who followed.

I also had to limit the list to stand-ups only, otherwise the list would’ve been enormous. Other notably influential comics I wanted to include were Peter Sellers, Groucho Marx, Bill Murray, Spike Milligan, Morecombe & Wise, Monty Python and Larry David. But the list would’ve then covered sketch comedy, double acts, T.V. comedy and film comedy so I had to draw a line somewhere.

I have also tried to include video clips where I can, so that you can sample the comedian’s work if you haven’t done so previously.

So, in no particular order, I present The 32 Most Influential Comedians of All Time:

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Secret Comedy Writing Technique – Malapropisms

In this next installment in my on-going mini series Secret Comedy Writing Techniques I’m going to cover Malapropisms and provide Malapropism examples. A malapropism is the incorrect use of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning, more often than not, with comic effect.

A malapropism is an example of an English writing technique, using long complicated words for comic effect. Essentially, the word that gets used means something different from the word the speaker or writer intended to use.

The word used sounds like the word that was apparently meant or intended. Malapropism examples; using a word like “obtuse” (wide or dull) instead of “acute” (narrow or sharp) is not a malapropism; using “obtuse” (stupid or slow-witted) when one means “abstruse” (esoteric or difficult to understand) would be.

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Public Speaking and Mind Mapping

It occurs to me that over the past couple of months I’ve been talking about Public Speaking and Mind Mapping without actually talking about the process that you go through in order to create a Mind Map.

Waaaaay back in the early 1990s, I taught myself Mind Mapping by reading the book by Tony Buzan entitled “Use Your Head” and also watching the video “Get Ahead”. Aah, VHS video those were the days. (If you still have the facility to play dead technology, like I do – just – check out the link).

Anyway, here’s a quick “cheat sheet” version of how to create a Mind Map (apologies to my Mind Map-enabled readers for teaching you how to suck eggs straight out the chicken).

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Secret Comedy Writing Technique – Oxymorons

Here’s the next part in my on-going mini series Secret Comedy Writing Techniques, in this post I’m covering Oxymorons. And no, they’re not a type of stupid cattle. That’s Oxenmoron.

Anyway, Wikipedia gives us the following definition for Oxymoron:

“An oxymoron (plural oxymorons or, more rarely, oxymora) is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms. Oxymoron is a loanword from Greek oxy (“sharp”) and moros (“dull”). Thus the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron.”

The thing is with this technique is that they are fairly frequent in the English language and as a result they don’t always create the desired humorous effect. I’m guessing but I think this is probably because we just accept some of the terms now without really seeing their comic absurdity. The following examples illustrate what I mean:

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