" A FUNNY THING HAPPENED!"

In fact four funny things happened at today's meeting of Pania Toastmasters as we held our Humorous Speech Contest and all four contestants were funny!!!(and their speeches were funny as well!). The Contests were presided over by first-time Contest Chairman Darryl and he did a great job.


Drawing for speaking order, first up was David with his speech entitled "Scotland the Brave", yes you guessed right, it was all about the Independence vote happening today with Scotland wanting to go it's own way. Some excellent humour included in this presentation as David (of Scottish heritage) regaled some of the many fine things that Scotland has bought to the world i.e. whiskey, haggis, porridge, bagpipes (or was that Wales boy-o) not to mention Loch Ness Monster and Billy Connolly!(actually he did not mention them!). Well done David some great humour at Scottish peoples expense and we all had a good laugh.
Next up was Barbara, her title "So Powerful" and this speech as well as being extremely funny and entertaining also had a message about turning a negative into a positive. Barbara certainly did this as she recounted (no doubt with a few embellishments) a story about the purchase of a Technicolour (Dreamcoat) Jacket and the subsequent events which led to her displaying the said article, and I believe it suited her.A great story well interspersed with excellent humour and body language and extremely well relaid to the audience. It was 'so powerful'.
Laurence was next and his speech was entitled "The Prefect Con". Laurence recounted an episode when he was 13 and learning the piano and tried to con his grandmother into thinking that it was him playing a cassette of a very difficult Mozart piece. Excellent description of the musical piece in question and also gestures when explaining the difficulty of the piece. With a twinkle in her eye, when the piece was finished, his grandmother said "well done dear!"
Last, but by no means least, was Carol(a newer member) with a speech entitled "Naked Wisdom", this would have probably been better as a video!! as Carol explained about what you should do and should not do while on holiday in a far off country. Well, Fiji is not that far away but Carol told us about an episode where she got locked out of her room while looking for the toilet in the middle of the night, while her husband slept blissfully on snoring like a steam train (a example of which Carol demonstrated extremely well). Carol admitted that she sleeps with nothing on!! so the rest you can guess, led to a very well told and very funny experience, which was probably not quite so humorous at the time!! Moral of the story- I leave it to your imagination.

Great effort from all four contestants ,the humorous contest is probably the hardest to enter, but you all achieved an excellent standard and I am sure that our winner will do well at the Area meeting on 26th September(be there to support them) . There has to be a winner and the Judges, Helen(Hastings Club visitor) Wendy, Mike and Craig decided on Barbara, with Carol as runner-up.

An excellent result and I know you will be at the Greenmeadows Community Centre, Tait Drive at 7.30pm on Friday 26th September supporting Barbara in both the Table Topics and Humorous Speech Contests. We certainly wish her well.

That's the contests out of the way for another few months, back to the usual meeting next week with Toastmaster Mike.