As the TM contest season approaches, I’m going to look at how to make a winning Toastmasters Humorous speech. Unlike the International Speech Contest advice I gave, which I had no business giving given I hadn’t competed in one, I’ve actually done humorous. I made it to Division, where a combination of me telling Gandhi and Mother Theresa jokes to a conservative audience and being up against an amazing 15 year veteran Toastmaster did me in. My speech was memorable - for better or worse - and four years later people still remember me as the Nobel Peace Prize guy.
Anyway the point here isn’t my success or lack thereof, but that I’m not a hypocrite for a change. I’m digressing.
In the next few posts I’ll walk through some common mistakes I’ve seen people make come contest time and some smart things I’ve seen done, too. To set expectations, I can’t make you funny if you’re not.
These posts are about winning your humorous speech contest, with a few random thoughts about being funny thrown in. Being a sneaky Toastmaster, I can share some advice about how to win against people who may be better than you.
In the next few posts, I’ll be looking at:
- RTFM, Part II
- Practice, Part II
- It Ain’t Standup
- Funny Title, Funny Opening
- TMs are Conservative
- The approximate text of my humorous speech
- An analysis of why I got run over at the Division level
- Maybe some other random stuff if I can think of it and I’m not too lazy