Winning ways at interviews.

Looking for some tips to ensure that you get the job at that crucial interview?

Read the Daily Mirror article by Ipswich Electrifiers’ member Cathy Shelbourne.

Tall Tales

Mark Witter, President of SpeakEasy at Martlesham, receives the Tall Tales Contest trophy from Rachel Sloane.

The Tall Tales Contest was hosted by Ipswich Electrifiers Speakers‘ Club Prizes were presented by BBC Radio Suffolk‘s Rachel Sloane, The runner-up was Bob Booker, also from SpeakEasy at Martlesham. Other speakers came from clubs in Colchester, Chelmsford and Ipswich

How to make people remember what you say

What did Cherie Blair really say about her neighbour Gordon Brown? Philip Collins, former chief speech writer to Tony Blair, was far too discreet to tell the enthralled audience at the Ipswich Electrifiers’ talk on 4th July. But he did share with us how he saved the day for his boss. He raided a Les Dawson joke book, and adapted an old gag about the wife running off with the man next door.

He wasn’t quite so successful when it came to John Prescott. Philip, who draws on sources as wide-ranging as Cicero and Dr Johnson (as well as Les Dawson), introduced into one of Prescott’s speeches a complicated build-up to the punch line, playing on the word “premises.” All was going extremely well, until Prescott forgot the key word and substituted ‘building’. The erudite audience, obviously better-read than the speaker, were stunned into silence.

And a stunned silence is the last thing a speaker wants. One of Philip’s top six tips included the sound advice that you should know your audience, and be a performer. Some of his more recent clients have asked him to turn them into an orator like Barack Obama. But if you are talking to an audience in Northampton about housing benefits, behaving like the President of the United States quickly loses the audience’s respect and interest. Choose a role model, he advises, but make sure it’s the right one.

Questions came thick and fast for Philip. What do you think about powerpoint? Don’t do it, he replied. How would he improve David Miliband’s performance? In his replies, as in his columns for The Times, he managed to appear that he was about to be tantalisingly indiscreet, or even challengingly rude, and then softened the blow by throwing in a few compliments. David Cameron, Tony Blair, David Davies, John Major − he had a good word for all of them.

It was a privilege, he said, to have your words spoken by a Prime Minister, despite the credit going to the speaker rather than the writer. Nonetheless, it had been a pleasant experience to write a book in which he could be more expansive in his writing style, and be himself. Copies of The Art of Speeches and Presentations, published by Wiley, and supplied for the talk by Browsers Bookshop of Woodbridge, were snapped up swiftly by the audience, keen to prolong the pleasure of listening to such an entertaining speaker.

His colleague at The Times, Daniel Finkelstein, with whom he obviously has some interesting banter from opposite ends of the political spectrum, was quite right. ”He isn’t just good, he is the best.’

The Art of Speeches and Presentations, published by Wiley, is available in paperback £14.99, and e-book £9.99.

ISSBA Suffolk Business Exhibition

Ipswich Electrifiers Speakers' Club attracted a good crowd on their stand at the ISSBA Suffolk Business Exhibition 2012.
Several Electrifiers also represented their own businesses.

Lights! Characters! Action! storytelling workshop

Renowned storyteller Andrew Brammer presented a brilliant Lights! Characters! Action! workshop to Ipswich Electrifiers on using stories to make presentations more dynamic. Andrew is a legend in his own storytime. His Stumpy stories, based on his experiences of growing up in Dunstable in the 1970s, have been performed at workshops throughout England and Ireland, and have just been published as Stumpy Sanderson’s Scrapbook (available on Amazon.co.uk). He has been a member of Toastmasters International for 14 years, and holds our highest qualification, that of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM). Now living in Norfolk, he co-founded the North Norfolk Speakers’ Club and has won numerous speech contests, including the District 71 (England and Ireland) Humorous Speech Championship in 2000.

Jacaranda 2000

Jacaranda 2000 Toastmaster's club is in the Local Authority of Ipswich Australia which lies twenty five miles to the east of Brisbane. The club is part of District 69 which includes all of Queensland and stretches from Papua New Guinea in the north to Northern New South Wales in the south and to Darwin and Alice Springs in the west. Having such a widespread district can lead to communication problems which they solve by holding district tele-conferences. Visit their club website here

Katie Ward

When Katie Ward realised that her first published novel, Girl Reading, was going to require her to be the girl reading at author evenings, she joined Ipswich Electrifiers in order to confront those fears and equip herself with techniques to speak successfully in public.
"The Electrifiers‘ meetings enabled me to practise reading excerpts in front of a supportive and constructive audience," she says. "The members also gave me much-appreciated feedback and practical advice, to help me overcome my nerves and speak with more confidence."

Girl Reading, by Katie Ward, is published by Virago, and is available from all good bookshops.