The humorous speech

When funny is not enough. Lessons learned the hard way

A number of years ago now, I decided to enter the Toastmaster Humorous Speech contest.

I hadn't entered that particular contest before, despite having given numerous humorous speeches, sometimes, intentionally. It would be a challenge, a stretch and, who knows? It might even be a laugh.

I chose a topic, and I wrote my speech. I sort of rehearsed it, as in a once, or twice, over lightly, “she’ll be right on the night”, kind of way.

And you know what’s coming next.

It wasn’t alright.

It wasn’t all wrong either. However, there were significant lessons learned.

Here’s one of them.

Part of what I hadn't thought through was the laughter.

People laughing take up time. You have to wait for them to finish chortling before you go on.

And neither had I reckoned on my own capacity to respond to it.

I got bigger and better in delivery: encouraged and emboldened by an appreciative audience. The "biggerer and betterer" I got, the longer I took. Until...

...suddenly the Timekeeper was flashing his red light at me from the back of the room. In Toastmasters, that means STOP. No more. Shut your mouth. Sit down.

Oh dear.

You can find a pdf of my speech and the rest my lessons here: the humorous speech. The biggest one was the most obvious and the toughest to openly admit to. I didn’t practice properly.

Until next week,
Happy teaching, happy speaking,
Susan