Its special for a member to win an area contest, but for a club to have members winning both contests of the evening is something truly special for any club. President Chris Werner set the room into hysterics in the Humorous Speech Contest by speaking with phonetic punctuation. What if all the punctuation marks had noises when speaking, how would it sound. Inspired by Victor Borge but originally reinvented, the President of Dublin South picked up his second area win of 2018. 

Even more impressive however, was the performance of John McCambridge. A new member of Dublin South, only recently completing his icebreaker gave an outstanding performance where it seemed that the topic asked would take no prisoners. Contestant after contestant in Area 54 were left almost speechless by the difficulty of the question asked. John managed to do what many Toastmasters forget…take your time and compose yourself. John proved that no matter how new you are to Toastmasters, if you throw yourself into it and give it a go, you never know what you might achieve!

The Humorous speech and Tall Tales winners advance to the Division Level which includes the winners of 8 areas across the greater Dublin region. The humorous speech contest is typically between 5-7 minutes and anyone can enter. So do you have a funny story, fancy yourself as a comedian, after dinner speaker? Keep an eye out for the next humorous speech contest in 2019.

Table Topics is among the hardest parts of Toastmasters, as it practices impromptu speaking, so there is no real best method to prepare. Even more difficult under pressure in a competition. However, at Toastmasters every meeting has 20 minutes of random table topics set by a table topics master, to practice those impromptu skills. Table Topics typically last 1-2 minutes, and the speaker must speak on the given topic for that time. Key thing with table topics is never panic, as you can turn the topic into something you can more easily talk about.