I talked a bit about this in my post about why your humorous speech should have a funny title and opening, but I want to come back to it. It actually applies to your entire speech.

Which of the following do you want to do?

1. Try to be funny and have the audience rolling on the floor.
2. Try to be funny and bomb.
3. Be cute / feel good, but not going for any laughs.

Let’s say that you don’t know if you can get (a). No one can ever be certain, after all. If (a) is off the table, which is better - (b) or (c)?

For real-life scenarios, it’s (d). Don’t try to be funny or cute if you’re not funny or cute. You don’t want your presentation to the board of directors to elicit groans at your bad jokes.

But remember - this isn’t real life, it’s Toastmasters! (I imagine my fellow blogger, ex-TM Jeff is chuckling .) In particular it’s a humorous speech contest. You’re better off going for jokes that will get the audience laughing and screwing up than playing it totally safe. Another advantage of these contests is that they’re short. No matter how poorly you do, at least 7 minutes later the nightmare is over. For longer speeches, trying to be funny repeatedly and failing is truly painful.

An example of playing it safe with a humorous type speech is Prairie Home Companion, a radio show on NPR. They try to have little cute, feel good stories and situations and all and it’s supposed to be funny. It’s not. One of my favorite Simpsons gags was when Homer was watching Prairie Home Companion on TV and didn’t get it. Finally he got up and started banging on the TV and said, “Be funny.”

A lot of humorous contest speeches are like this. They try and describe kind of cute situations, but at best they’ll leave you with a smile, but won’t come close to making you laugh. They generally don’t do well at contest season.

I’m not trying to be harsh on TM’s who have a softer, NPR sense of humor. I’m assuming that if you’re still reading you’re serious about winning one of these contests and you want to know the harsh truth about what it takes to win. Most of the judges are like me. They want to hear the audience actually laughing and they want some pop in the speech. If you want you want a non-contest speech to be cutesy, that’s fine. I’ll give you %95 chances you’ll still be better than our friends an NPR.

(If you’re wondering — my dad listened to Prairie Home Companion and I caught it 2nd hand as a kid and I never got it, which is why I’m picking on it in particular.)

I’d also rather do (b) than (c) if I’m speaking . Let’s say that I give a 5-7 minute humorous speech and it’s a disaster. I go for huge jokes and no one laughs. OK. It’ll be the longest 5-7 minutes of my life, but I can at least do a post-mortem to figure out what went wrong. It’s not always your fault. I’ve seen good speeches bomb because the mood of the audience isn’t right. More likely it is your fault though, which is good because you can fix the next time.

If you get up and don’t try to get laughs or play it really really safe, you don’t learn as much about being funny. Learning is what the contests are about after all, even if we get obsessed with winning.

The take away is despite my warnings against standup comedy, you have to be willing to get up there and swing and miss.