One For The Road

Speak Easy Toastmasters First Meeting 2nd of September

Speak Easy Toastmasters commenced the 2010-11 Season on September 2nd, with our first meeting being opened by the new Club President, Margaret O’ Regan. Toastmaster Jean Sayers chaired the meeting.

The first speaker was Joe Hassett, who delivered a speech entitled “One for the Road” as a fact finding report from the Speaking to Inform Manual. After the report, Joe conducted a question and answer session with the audience. Joe provided the socking statistics that 37 out of 100 road deaths are caused by alcohol. Cait Murray was Joe’s evaluator.

Joe was followed by Kieran Butler, who delivered a stage 7 project from the basic manual. In his speech entitled “The Burning Question”, Kieran highlighted the fact that Climate Change is everybody’s responsibility. Kieran’s speech was evaluated by Angela Sheehan.

The third speaker was Liam Flynn, who did an interpretive reading from the play ‘The Field’. Liam brought the piece to life with his excellent use of vocal variety. Liam’s reading was evaluated by Jerry Mulcahy.

Following Liam, came Sean Corcoran who did a project from the story telling manual. The humorous story entitled ‘All is not as it seems to be’ gave an insight into the fact that most publications are geared towards a certain section of society. Sean was evaluated by Noel O’ Connor.

The final speaker for the night was Pat Sexton who delivered a stage 7 project from the basic manual. In his speech entitled ‘The evening recital’ Pat gave us an insight into the importance of music as a backdrop to our lives. Pat’s speech was evaluated by Marie Fitzpatrick.


A humorous topics session was conducted by Topicsmaster Pat Duggan, with Pat leaving everybody at the meeting in a positive frame of mind after the topics session.

Timekeeper Jerry O Callaghan kept everybody on their toes as time keeper while grammarian/ah counter Ray Ryan encouraged the use of the word ‘paragon’ meaning a model of excellence during the course of the meeting.

The Sergeant at Arms for the meeting were Josephine O’ Sullivan-Lenihan, Mary McCarthy and Liam Flynn.

Michael Cronin conducted the General Evaluation Session. Finally, the Club’s achievements for the previous year were recognized by Toastmaster International with the presentation of an award to Michael Cronin, the immediate past president of Speak Easy Toastmasters.

Speak Easy Toastmasters will hold their next meeting at the Hibernian Hotel, Mallow, September 16th at 7:50PM. Non-members are more than welcome to attend and will not be asked to speak. Further details about the Club are available on our website, www.speakeasytoastmasters.com