Speakeasy Meeting

Speakeasy Toastmasters held a successful demonstration meeting on January 19th, and the 15 non-members in attendance were introduced to the world of Toastmasters. Toastmaster for the evening was a welcome visitor from Britain, Bob Ferguson, a long-standing member of Toastmaster and a well-known public speaker. Bob chaired the meeting, and explained all aspects of the Toastmaster organisation, with great energy and enthusiasm. The other officers for the meeting included Pat Duggan as Topicsmaster and Michael Cronin as General Evaluator.

The speakers for the meeting represented all levels of the Toastmaster program. The first speech was delivered by Kieran Butler, a Transition Year student from Kanturk. Completing the stage 1 speech from the basic manual, Kieran delivered a powerful account of the emotional and physical abuse suffered by some children. Following Kieran was Loretto Barry. Loretto described a humorous personal incident which fulfilled one of the stages of the Storytelling Manual. The next speaker was Brian McLoughlin, who completed the after-dinner speech project from the entertaining speaker manual. Brian delivered an after-dinner speech with a difference, describing the principals of alternative comedy, complete with two original sketches!

Following Brian was Helen O’ Sullivan, who surpassed her recent impressive debut as a speaker with an innovative stage 2 basic manual speech. Helen described the BEAR principal of coping with nervousness when one is speaking in public, BEAR being B(reathing slowly), E(njoy the experience), A(udience participation) and R(ehersal, plenty of). Helen demonstrated the BEAR principal with the assistance of a Teddy Bear! Finally Pat Sexton completed a stage from the
Entertaining Speaker Manual, delivering a speech which described how slogans and catch-phrases from Film and Television have entered everyday conservation.

While a demonstration meeting is specifically held for non-members in mind, all of our meetings are open to the public and non-members will not be asked to speak. Our next meeting will be held on February, at the Hibernian Hotel, Mallow for 8:00PM. Further details about the club are available from the PRO at 086-3675706 and from our club website, www.speakeasytoastmasters.com. You can also follow the Club’s activities over the past three years from our archive of press reports, available at www.speakeasytm.blogspot.com.