Talk slowly and take your time. If it takes 12 minutes, not nine, it doesn’t matter at all.

Pause for effect. Your audience need time to digest the story before they get the punch-line. So give them time to get it.

Emphasise key words. Imagine you’re telling a story without a script. You’ll say some words louder than most. And change your inflection on others.

Ignore hecklers. You can pre-prepare a couple of responses to a noisy member of the crowd, or smile and thank them politiely.  But it is usually safest to ignopre them completely.  This is a wedding, not a stand-up gig, and you are not expected to come up with pithy responses fit for the Comedy Store.

Practise. Great material is irrelevant if it’s delivered badly. You’ll be much more natural when you’re not reading straight from the page. Know it well enough that it just becomes a safety net.

Gesticulate. Body language is vital. If you’re addressing someone, look at them. Use your arms to emphasise a point.

Manage the shakes. Paste your speech onto card. Or rest it somewhere you can see it. Find out if there’s a lectern. Holding a shaky piece of paper will put you off before you get going.

Don’t get drunk beforehand. It may feel like the easy way to get through it, but it won’t seem so sensible afterwards.

It goes without saying that everyone has different concerns about their own speech and that these tips only cover some high-level worries.  I run sessions helping clients with their delivery as well as writing their speeches, so please call me if you’d like a more personal discussion of the issues facing you on the day.

A: When it is spelt ‘speach’.
And also when it becomes a cabaret act.

Whether you’re giving a business presentation or a wedding speech, props can make or break the day.   And so whether you are thinking about PowerPoint slides, blown-up pictures, objects of special significance or something completely innovative, here are a few things to consider:

1. Ensure the prop is relevant and adds value to your speech. If you think it might cause offense, forget about it.
2. Try to use it as the punch line, rather than leaving the audience wondering what it’s doing there in the first place. 
3. Whilst it’s useful to use a prop to divert attention from you if you’re nervous about having everyone’s eyes on you, don’t let it completely detract from what you’re saying. First and foremost you want them to listen to you.
4. Don’t forget that your prop needs to be big enough to be seen by short-sighted people at the back of the room.
5. As you would with your speech and presentation, practise with the prop, rather than hoping it all comes together on the day. You may find it useful to enlist a helper to ensure it appears and disappears smoothly and easily.
6. Check that the venue  has the appropriate lighting or technology to accommodate your props.
7. Never leave a comical prop by your side when you’re making a serious point.
8. And finally, whilst the odd prop can add value, too many can suffocate the speech or presentation, so don’t get carried away.

If after reading this you’re still struggling to work out how best to use your props (or whether to use them at all), give me a call on 0208 245 8999.

All the best

Lawrence

PS – if you are a Best Man thinking about asking a bunch of women in the audience to rattle keys when you bring up the question of all the groom’s exes, I have one piece of advice:
Please don’t!

1. Don’t leave it to the last minute: Believe it or not, it’s your speech rather than the flowers that people will remember. Don’t leave preparation to the night before. There’s a reason your father has spent the last 3 months getting his speech right – these things take time! And as the bride, the spotlight will be on you more than anyone else, so it’s even more important you’re fluent and prepared.
2. Timing: Some Brides want to use their speech to mark the end of the celebrations. This can be dangerous. Some guests may have left, many will be drunk and you may have missed the moment. I’d suggest speaking directly after your husband, providing a female viewpoint and leaving the Best Man to finish things off.
3. Enlist a friend: Most wedding dresses don’t leave much room for your notes! So make sure you’ve asked a  Bridesmaid or close friend in advance to hold onto your speech until you need it. ‘Easy to read’ speech cards are always a good idea.
4. Consult the other speakers: Your biggest risk is covering ground that has already been mentioned in the other speeches. I would strongly recommend that however original you think your speech may be, you have a quick chat with your Groom, your Dad and the Best Man to ensure there is no frustrating overlap.
5. Be nice to your new family: This is not the time to offend your mother-in-law – you’ve got plenty of years ahead of you to do that! If you’re mentioning your own family, it would be courteous to include your husband’s too.
6. Using Rhyme: I’ve often been asked by Brides to write their speech in rhyme. This can add an original change of style from the other speeches. But be careful. Rhyme isn’t easy to sustain. If you want to use it go for a few verses, instead of the entire speech. You may also want to use a well-known poem as a template. If so, try to choose one that means something to the groom.
7. End with a Toast: I wouldn’t repeat one of the traditional toasts given by the other speakers. This is a great opportunity to include other people or say something a little bit different. You could toast your hosts (i.e. ‘Mum and Dad’) or propose a more general toast to ‘friends and family’.

If writing a speech on top off planning the entire wedding feels too much for you, then pick up the phone and give me a call on +44 208 245 8999. It’ll give you one less thing to worry about!

Best wishes

Lawrence

So how do you go about practising for the big moment?

Let’s start with defining ‘practice’.
‘Practice’ doesn’t mean silently reading the speech or Power-Point notes to yourself on the train, or in bed each evening. Nor does it mean running through it until you can recall the key headings and a few words here and there.

Practice means trying to get as close as possible to how you’ll deliver the speech on the day itself. Here are my top tips:

1. Stand up and read it aloud. But don’t just recite it; put some feeling into it, emphasising key words, pausing at appropriate moments and looking up at your (imaginary) audience as you would on the day.
2. Hold a tube of toothpaste or something similar to recreate the microphone.
3. Ask your other half or a good mate to listen and make suggestions if things don’t sound right.
4. Imagine that you have an audience in front of you, and create as much eye contact with them as possible.
5. Use the same cards, paper or laptop that you’ll be using on the day.
6. If you’re getting bored with the speech, then stop practising so frequently.  Just have a run through as and when you’re worried you’re beginning to forget it.
7. Perfect your posture. Good posture can make you look and feel more confident.
8. You may want to rehearse in the clothes you’ll be wearing on the day. If it’s formal clothes, it can help to become familiar with the feeling of tightness around the neck that comes from wearing a suit.

If you feel this is bordering on the obsessive, remember that stage shows never go ahead without a full dress rehearsal, so why should your speech?!

I hope that’s helpful. If you would like some help rehearsing, or on the writing part for that matter, please feel free to contact me on +44 208 245 8999.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Lawrence

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The important thing to remember at this formative stage is that the finished product needs to be read aloud. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of writing an ‘essay’ that looks great on paper, but sounds downright odd when you read it out.

So how do you write a speech that will come across well on the day?

1. Use short, punchy sentences. Six to eight words is ideal.
2. Break up longer sentences into manageable sections. Use dots…to mark convenient places for you to pause…and breath.
3. Don’t be afraid to use conjunctions (and/but) at the start of some sentences. It may not be perfect grammar, but they reflect the way that people speak out loud, and can keep the flow of the speech moving without any awkward pauses!
4. Type each section of your speech separately. For example, after the section where you introduce yourself, hit the Return key a couple of times so you have a few lines of space. This will help you remember where to pause.
5. After a few minutes of writing, step away from the computer to clear your head. When you return, have a look at what you last wrote. Then delete every word that doesn’t seem to add any value.
6. Read sentences aloud after you have written them. This may make you feel a bit bonkers if you’re sitting alone in front of a computer, but it’s an invaluable way of instantly discovering what sounds right (and, more importantly, what doesn’t). This technique will help you get rid of tongue twisters and other worlds that you just aren’t comfortable delivering.
7. Use the Word Count function on your computer. Work on the basis that 500 words should take you approximately five minutes to deliver. If maths isn’t your strong point, that means that to keep the speech within 10 minutes, you need to keep it under 1000 words!

I appreciate that much of this (as ever) is just common sense, but I hope it helps you get started.  If not, I would (as ever!) be delighted to write it for you.

Lawrence

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1. Be natural. Gordon Brown wasn’t. His smiles were forced and made him look awkward. Nick Clegg was, and he became more believable as a result.
2. Be relevant. Clegg answered his audiences’ questions directly and then referred back to them. He mentioned the names of the people who asked each question. It made him look like he cared. Cameron and Brown picked up on this later on but Brown’s reference to ‘the questioner’ was impersonal and gave the impression that he wasn’t listening.
3. Appear relaxed. This doesn’t come easily to Brown. Cameron is a master at it. Last night he appeared to decide to look more austere and Prime Ministerial. Clegg just relaxed. Or appeared to. The hand in the left pocket was a masterstroke as it helped him look entirely at ease.
4. Be positive. The relentless attacks on Cameron may have been well-aimed but audiences tend to respond better to ideas and suggestions than to negativity. Clegg clothed his criticism with alternative policy suggestions. Some were unworkable, but his approach was constructive.
5. Look up. I dread to think how much time and money went into preparing the three leaders for the debate. But it paid off. They all had notes, but didn’t appear to be reading from them. They all looked at their audience. Clegg, again, went a step further and confidently looked into the camera. At us. Again, it worked.
6. Be sincere. Whether or not your audience like what you are saying, they need to believe it. Brown didn’t help himself at all with the scripted jokes and the bizarre smirk. They actually reduced the effectiveness of many of his more impressive, factual points.
7. Know your detail. The big picture is vital and sets the scene. But detail provides colour. All three leaders provided first hand evidence of conversations they have had in specific places with real people. Brown won on substance and this was definitely where Cameron was at his weakest.
8. Speak slowly. Can you remember one instance of not being able to follow what any of them were saying? Nor me. They spoke at the right pace, enabling us to easily digest a series of complex issues.

As per usual, there is little rocket science here. But these are vital lessons to take into any speech or presentation you need to make, from a PowerPoint pitch to an after dinner speech.

It is pretty obvious that Clegg won last night – and from a professional perspective, he ticked all the boxes that turn a good public speaker into a great one.

Daran has kindly agreed to write a series of four blog posts about how to make people laugh.  The first of these focuses on the reasons we find things funny in the first place.  Over to you Daran:

How To Write A Joke, Part 1: What’s funny?

Comedy, or, more broadly, just those mechanisms out in the world which cause us to laugh, usually has something to do with a loss of order or control.

When someone trips up on a banana skin, it’s funny, because they don’t expect it; because they have lost the control they had over the world.  It’s to do with futility, to an extent.  It’s the notion that no matter how hard you try you just cannot control the world around you, because there are way too many variables to consider.

This isn’t just reserved for physical comedy, or slapstick. It’s the basis of a pun, too. Consider a misunderstanding based on the fact someone uses the term ‘bare hands’ in reference to those of a bear – the confusion can easily become comic. The reason it’s funny is just because clearly the process by which our language was constructed did not proceed with the intention of two words being so easily confused.

Homophones, that is two words which sound the same and yet have different meanings, are, in a sense, a mistake. They’re a fault in language; something that hasn’t been properly accounted for.  And so when we exploit these ‘mistakes’, through the use of puns, what we’re really doing is holding a mirror up to this system of communication we’ve developed and laughing at how rubbish it is.

Language is just another method by which man tries to control the world, and our deconstruction thereof through jokes is just another means by which to remind ourselves that this is impossible. But, probably more importantly, it’s also about letting one another know that too, and sharing in the communal futility. Whether you’re making a business presentation, writing a speech for a social occasion, or just down the pub with friends, the comedy you create will likely be grounded in this idea.

So …bit of a bleak overview, but not to worry. A more optimistic way to think of comedy, perhaps, rather than ‘discovering the futility of our attempts to control’, is the simple mantra that ‘you shouldn’t take things too seriously’. The reason, of course, being because ‘things’ don’t work anyway.

We laugh at what we can’t control. So, in essence, nature is funny. When a dog licks itself; that’s funny. When horses have sex; that’s funny. Cucumbers, sleepy cats, being snowed in, waddling, the smell of a cow pat, or just the way one tree sticks ridiculously far above the canopy for no apparent reason – it’s all funny because it’s all just there, beyond our control.

So if comedy’s about lack of control, how do we create it? We need something to exploit. So look for something that doesn’t work in language. Look for some linguistic feature that isn’t doing its job properly.

Thanks so much Daran; the next installment on  ‘How to write a joke for a speech’ will appear later in the week.
Lawrence

Know your lines – Yes, you’ll need to write a speech, but no, you shouldn’t read it out.  You are speaking about your own convictions.  Reading from a page will instantly give the impression that you are  giving someone else’s.  By all means have a script to refer to, but know it well enough that it is obvious you are speaking from the heart rather than the page.

Relevance – People are coming to hear you speak to get to know more about you and what you will do for them locally and in Parliament.  On that basis there is no point launching straight into the party’s national agenda.  They can hear that on the BBC.

Context – Although relevance is vital, you can’t speak entirely independently of the Party line.  The key for them is to understand how the big picture promises will effect them locally.  Your role is to act as a translation service between the two.

Brevity – There is always a temptation to use a constituency hustings or set-piece speech to roll-off your life’s works and ambitions.  But think about what your audience want, which tends to be a punchy, interesting speech that moves on quickly and is easy to follow.

Positive – In any political forum there will be a temptation to knock the opposition.  But don’t let this become your sole objective.  Your audience want to understand what you will do to improve things.  By all means point out what needs to be improved, but you will make a longer-lasting impression by focusing on the positive elements you can add.

The simplicity tightrope – The best speeches are always easy to follow.  But many a constituency speech borders on being patronising.  Be clear, set out the context and your preferred solutions, but don’t talk down to your audience.  There is nothing worse than a politician who treads a roomful of voters like a primary school class.

Don’t Preach – This is an opportunity for your constituents (or potential constituents) to get to know you better, but as importantly, it’s a chance for you to get to know them.  The most fruitful parts of meetings of this sort are often the questions and answers.  And so rather than a fist-thumping sermon about the benefits of voting for you, leave as much time as possible to respond to questions and comments in a calm and intelligent way.

Eye contact – It sounds obvious, but people will like and trust you more if you look at them when you speak.  Look around the room.  Try to meet people’s gaze.  Smile where possible.  This humanises you and is more likely to win people over than if you are focused on your notes or the middle distance.

Be Relaxed – Tension is a turn-off.  You are speaking because you want to represent these people in Westminster.  On that basis it is important that you appear calm and unflustered even if the debate isn’t going your way.  If you appear to let the tension get to you then you stand to lose your audience’s confidence pretty fast.

a) who speaks when at a wedding; and
b) who needs to say what in their wedding speech?

As you’ll read elsewhere on the site, I suggest planning your speech around the ‘must haves’ and the ‘might haves’.  The list below focuses solely on the ‘must haves’.
Many wedding speeches fall foul of ‘listing’, where you subject the audience to a never-ending barrage of sincere thankyous.  The best speeches weave these ‘must haves’ around their more creative elements and so you hardly realise that they are running through a list at all.
Here’s a quick reminder of the things that you will probably need to include if it’s a standard wedding with an orthodox set of speeches.

The Father of the Bride Speech

(creative input focuses mainly on the Bride and her new husband)
1. Welcome the guests
2. Welcome your new family
3. Mention your wife
4. Mention guests who cannot be there
5. Toast the Bride and Groom
You may also want to mention your other children, the vicar or equivalent, any friends who have helped with the organisation (including the flowers) and people who have travelled a long way.

The Groom Speech

(creative input focuses mainly on the Bride)
1. Thank the Father of the Bride
2. Thank the guests
3. Mention the new-in-laws
4. Mention your own family
5. Mention any particularly elderly or ‘special’ guests
6. Thank the Best Man and ushers
7. Toast the Bridesmaids
Your thankyous may overlap with the Father of the Bride and so it is worth trying to share them between you.  You may also want to mention guests who can’t be there and thank anyone from the wedding planner to the flower arranger (although I suggest that you restrict your thankyous to volunteers)

The Best Man Speech

(creative input focuses mainly on the Groom)
1. Read any telegrams
2. Respond to toast on behalf of bridesmaids
3. Thank your hosts
4. Toast the Bride and Groom
This list is short and sweet and yours is the speech with most room for creativity and fun.  However, it is still worth checking with the groom that he doesn’t want you to take any of the ‘must haves’ off his plate.

That’s the high level summary.  Please don’t assume anything and always check with the others that you are not going to cover the same ground.  Good luck, and please feel free to call me at any time if you’d like more detailed advice or help putting it all together.

I am in the process of writing a series of booklets about the speech writing process.  Each will contain a question and answer section with real answers given to real questions asked by real people.

If you have a speech-related question that is bothering you, please let me know. I’ll reply as quickly as I can, and with your permission, it may be published (and please don’t worry, your surname won’t be!).

And so whether your question is about planning, writing or delivering your speech, please feel free to drop me an email or add a response below this blog.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope I will be able to help.

Thanks, Lawrence