West Herts Speakers: Not 1, not 2 but 3 Best Table Topic Speakers

Stuart, Corrinne, Steve

It was a night full of surprises that's for sure. The Table Topics session was run by Chet Thaker and had a theme of School Days. 5 lucky participants got the opportunity relive their youth and we were treated to tales of inspiration, school choices made based on uniform colour and a playground punch! West Herts Speakers members are an interesting bunch to say the least.

When it came to announce the winner of Best Table Topics Speaker our President, Gwendoline Alderston, was lost for words. We had 3 table topics winners and they were Corrinne Frydman, Stuart Beattie and Steve Preece. Possibly a first at West Herts Speakers!

For the prepared speeches we were treated to two speeches from Advanced level manuals given by Gwendoline Alderton and Elizabeth Hendry. Gwendoline did a speech project from the Persuasive Speaking manual entitled Conquering the Cold Call to sell high value items and we were given some top tips from her Interior Design expertise. We learned about the AIDA concept - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Elizabeth performed a speech project from the Storytelling manual and told us a true story of a time when a drunk intruder got into her flat and she had to call the Police to get him out. There was a nice twist to the end of the story with not one but TWOsilver linings.

An impromptu speech was given by Colin Donald with a speech entitled 'Nothing about Nothing'. Colin told us how he one day declared to his wife that he knew nothing about nothing and as a result took it upon himself to learn about Architecture which led him to learn about History from which he learned about Art thanks inspired by Ernst Gombrich's book The Story of Art. He went from knowing nothing about nothing to knowing something about something!

We continued our growth of the club by welcoming two more new members - Jenny Bullen and Shola Ayeni . Welcome to both of them and we look forward to seeing them in speaking roles very soon!