23 Oct

Speakeasy Toastmasters Mallow

Smoking, tyres, a wedding…. Frank… and Warren Who?

You’d have been forgiven for having thought that you were in a comedy club last Thursday night at the Speakeasy Toastmasters meeting because there were non stop laughs from start to finish. And it wasn’t even the night of the Humorous speech competition. Even on serious subjects speakers managed to raise a few laughs - which can be a difficult thing to do.
Our first speaker of the night was Anne Buckley who very capably defended our right to smoke ….we all know they’re bad for us but surely self-imposed discipline is better than state-enforced prohibition? The speech was very capably evaluated by Ray Ryan. ‘Are you ready to retyre?’ asked Tim Ahern, and followed that up by asking if we were losing our grip….and we began to realise that this was no ‘typo’. Tim was talking about the need to check and replace your tyres on a routine basis before they cause a trip to the car repair shop, the hospital or worse. Mary Buckley evaluated Tim’s speech and as usual did a fine job. Fiona Herbert described her wedding day as ‘A dramatic tale’ and shared with us the wonder, excitement and anticipation she felt on the morning of her wedding. She gave a wonderful and humorous insight into the chaos that followed through the preparations – there was no mention of preparing a bathroom rota in any of the wedding magazines she had consulted! In with all the happiness and memories she felt somewhat sad at the prospect of leaving home for good. Eileen Corkery was the evaluator of this speech and gave a concise and excellent evaluation. ‘Thanks Ralph’ was the title of the speech given by Jeremiah Ronayne who spoke in praise of Ralph Smedley who was the founder of Toastmasters International. Ralph Smedley set up the first Toastmasters club in a YMCA club in the US. The first speeches were given at mealtimes and as such he called it a Toastmasters club, although the main function of the organisation was to help people with public speaking, in general. He went on to form a number of clubs in America and Canada which were separate from the YMCA. Today there are in the region of 10,000 toastmaster clubs worldwide. Jeremiah’s speech was evaluated by the experienced Noel o’ Connor. The final speech of the night came from Pat Sexton who asked and answered the question ‘Warren who?’ This speech was delivered as an appreciation for a musician – Warren Zevon - who was greatly admired by the music world but remained generally unknown by the album-buying public. Zevon’s music was described to us as strange and dark, with ‘a lot of blood in these epic tales’. The evaluation was given by the brave Michael Cronin – and it has to be described as the most hilarious evaluation that most of us had ever heard!

Our next meeting is on Thursday night, 30th October and, as usual, guests are very welcome to attend. The meetings start at 8:00 pm and we ask everyone to be at The Hibernian Hotel (Chapel Lane) at 7:50 pm.

If you would like to know more about Speakeasy Toastmasters club you can ring Angela at 022 51071 or Sean at 022 22755 for information. Or you can log onto our website; www.clix.to/speakeasy. The club’s e-mail address is speakeasymallow@eircom.net