This week’s meeting was opened by our new President, Dominique Fourniol, who reminded us of Toastmaster’s history and gave us a description of the various manuals that it is possible to work through as a Toastmasters member. Another assured performance from Dom that would have been of particular interest to the guests, which is one of the President’s main objectives.

Toastmaster for the evening was Michaela Talbot who gave her usual faultless performance, and told us the three main reasons that she continues to come to Toastmasters: the feedback, the stage practice, and the bar! Michaela had also gone to the trouble of asking all the participants what their dream job or dream place to live would be. A really well prepared element that helped us learn something about others in the club.

We were treated to three speeches from experienced members of the club. Firstly Rosalind delivered her No.10 speech – a personal and inspiring story of her father’s death from leukaemia, and how adversity can be overcome through love and compassion. A fantastic speech that earned the best prepared speech award on the night. Congratulations to Ros on achieving her Competent Communicator award.

Fresh from her travels in the USA, Zoe gave us a speech on how best to organise a family reunion. Apparently the secret ingredients are location, plenty of activities to suit all ages, and timing the reunion so that as many as possible can attend. A really well structured and warmly delivered speech, it’s great to have Zoe back with us!

Thirdly we had a speech from the ever energetic Freddie Daniells, speaking from the advanced Humorous Speech manual. Transforming the story of how he awaited the launch of the new iPhone 4 into a funny and fast-paced narrative it was an excellent example of vocal variety and dramatic storytelling, delivered with typical Freddie Daniells gusto!

After the break the speeches were evaluated by Nathalie Durmuller, Peter Fruzetti and Chris Boden respectively. Guy Smith took charge of the Table Topics session, giving participants the chance to indulge in some salesmanship. Topics ranged from trying to sell the merits of black and white TVs in an age of high definition; selling the idea of smoking to a health conscious population; selling the holiday potential of Slough; and selling the tempting prospect of a dinner date with Gordon Brown – a performance for which Chris Boden won a justly deserved Table Topics prize. Well done to Guy for producing such inventive Topics that provided some great humour.

The Table Topics were evaluated by the inimitable Ratan Lele. Ratan gave another excellent evaluation, mixing useful recommendations with his own unique brand of humour. This created a Holborn Speakers first – a three way split in the Best Evaluator award, shared by Ratan, Chris Boden and Peter Fruzetti.

The meeting was rounded off by a General Evaluation from Andrew Jones of Early Bird Speakers, providing some useful recommendations for members and the club as a whole. Thanks to Andrew for filling the role.

Thus another successful Holborn meeting adjourned downstairs to the bar. For those of you wise enough to be in possession of a ticket to the Holborn Anniversary Party on the 23rd July, we shall see you there. Otherwise, our next regular meeting is on August 3rd.

Filed by: jgoddard | Category: Meetings
Thursday, July 22nd 2010 5:22 pm

Ian Brown grabbed the coveted best prepared speech award, while the hotly contested table topics trophy was lifted by our very own Mother Theresa…Kaveh Pourvand. Jackie Brennan managed to fight off audience distractions to win the best evaluator prize and the president’s award is on it’s way to Fremantle, Australia.

Ian Brown kicked off the prepared speeches with his speech entitled “booze blues”, the no #3 is about getting to the point and that he certainly did, he made us aware of the dangers of excessive alcohol. The governor of the Rugby Tavern might have wondered why the profits for the evening were down and why some of the Holborn members were drinking half pints. Hisham Al-Obaidi confessed to being a “drug dealer”, of the authorised kind – he told us about his life as a pharmacist and definitely managed to inform the audience, and if you can do that in an Ice Breaker well then you’re already starting to punch in the next division, a very confident first speech. Joga’s humorous impromptu speech gave us some insight into the world of Joga Bains and how to impress a lady on a first date with a bag of hot chips. He gave us a humorous account of his first meeting with his in-laws to be, or “outlaws” as he called them.

A concise round of speech evaluations followed the break. Michaela Talbot, Martin Mwaka and Anna Hayward all impressed, welcome back Anna Hayward after being away from Holborn for some time.

Table topics followed with our table topics mistress, Natalie Durmuller , an very interesting round of topics – with setting table topics, imagination is key, but who could have imagined Mother  Theresa being reincarnated in the Iranian embassy in London, beautiful ! Natalie in her task and being Swiss, managed to highlight the international diversity of Holborn Speakers – we had contestants from Australia, South Africa, Germany, Iran and of course Blighty, we also had a demonstration by Immo on how to shake hands with an Octopus. Congratulations to all the participants, Kaveh’s encounter with Mother Theresa in the Iranian embassy took the first prize.

Jackie Brennan did a great job of evaluating a signficant number of Table Topics contestants and in doing so kept to time, included her usual humor and gave good commendations and recommendations for each speaker, Jackie would be the eventual winner of the best evaluator award.

Graeme Conn our Toastmaster for the evening ran the meeting well – but to his own admission lacked a little energy, he was seen at the break discussing options with Hisham, the “authorised drug dealer”…  James Goddard produced a faultless effort as timekeeper for the evening and Anthony Robinson our grammarian gave us a master class in this very important discipline.  Joga Bains did a wonderful job as Sergeant-at-arms and helped a significant number of guests with their introductions. Ratan Lele stood in as General Evaluator for the evening, Ratan does what it says on the tin and more.

Dominique Fourniol closed off his first presidential duty for the year, by handing out the awards for the evening. His choice to hand his first president’s award to a 12 year old visitor (Georgie Street) from Freemantle, Australia was met with rapturous agreement from the Holborn audience.

A fantastic start to the toastmaster year, which was summarised very nicely in this thank you note from an international guest:

Dear Dominique

Thank you for welcoming us to your club last night. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the differences and similarities of the meeting. The greatest similarity was the warmth and friendliness from everyone and I hope we will be able to welcome some of your members visiting Fremantle Gateway Club in the future. Congratulations on your first night as president. Georgie is really thrilled with her award!

Best Wishes for a happy year

Gilly

Another action packed evening ended in the customary “networking” session downstairs in the comfort of the Rugby tavern. Last orders, we’ll see you next week.

Filed by: graemeconn | Category: Meetings
Thursday, July 15th 2010 11:32 am

Due to the World Cup and other absences there will be no meeting on Tuesday 6th July. The next regular meeting is on Tuesday 13th July.

Filed by: sramay | Category: Uncategorized
Saturday, July 3rd 2010 1:19 pm