Meeting Reports – 13th July 2010
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.
