Public Speaking

Not an easy thing to do; you're either good at it or not. Yet there are clubs you can join where you can larn how to do it. So I have been told. You wouldn't see me there for love nor money. Can't say I have any desire to speak in public anyway; I have done it occasionally for family affairs but then you don't have to do it expecting to be good at it; you do it so that freinds and family know that you care - about whatever the get-together is for.
I met a pathologist at one of our weekend writing courses. The first time he came he said he wanted to learn to write like Bernard Levin. The next time he came he said he didn't want to write articles any more; he wanted now to learn how to be a public speaker. There was no way we could advise him on that so we just listened to his efforts and said what we thought about his technique. When he came the third time he had been attending, he said, a public-speaking course. I couldn't see any improvement. In fact, to be honest - I didn't tell him this - I sensed a decline in his ability. He had, I think, been forced to follow a set of rules which, of course, led him along a path towards sameness; he now lacked a certain individuality; it wasn't him being natural but him being ordinary.
Toby Young, writing in The Spectator last week, tells of his experiences as a public speaker. At weddings and at certain functions that had to do with setting up one's own school (which he is now doing). He said that when he tried to make his speeches funny, they were always disastrous. He'd tell a joke which would go down like a lead balloon. Then he'd try a dirty joke with F's in it. Equally disastrous. Or worse - silence.
I knew a bloke who was quite a good actor, amateur variety. He was a very big bore, off stage. In short, when he was being himself he was boring; when he was playing someone else he was that person and was entertaining. He had also joined a public-speaking course. Disastrous. He was a bigger bore than he was naturally.
Public speaking is an art not a craft: you can learn a craft but an art is something that comes out of your own personality and experience. Don't ask what that something is please because I don't know.