The Humorous Speech
(When Funny is Not Enough)

The humorous speech...
It was that time of year in the Toastmaster's Calendar for the humorous speech contest.

Who would enter?

I decided to. I had never been in humorous speech contest despite having given humorous speeches before. It would be a challenge, a stretch and who knows, it might even be a laugh!

So what happened?

I chose a topic and mixed the ingedients carefully.
There was:

• melodrama - exaggeration and hyperbole



• a pun or two



• absurdity



• characterisation - the taking on of other voices in storytelling



• use of gesture & deliberate movement around the stage



• seeds of truth - enough to make it real



• use of alliteration



• examples of irony



• rhetorical questions - to hook the audience



• interactivity - an invitation to join with me in singing



• changes of pace - slow, medium, fast and very fast



• changes of pitch & volume



• use of the dramatic pause

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• Time waits for no man (or woman) not even funny ones. A time limit is finite. As Shakespeare says, 'Brevity is the soul of wit'.



• Practice may have made perfect but I'll never know because I didn't give myself the opportunity to find out.



• Practice as if you were performing and if possible with an audience.



• Practice with a stop watch but more than that know the time you are taking for the introduction, middle and end.



• Be prepared to ruthlessly cut if you find you're over time. Start with any multiple examples you've used to illustrate a main point.
  The weakest of these go first. Repeat until the entire speech is comfortably under the time limit.

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