Stephen Fry and things...

OK... I know it's not the best photo I've ever taken. In fact, when I sent it to my brother, he worriedly asked if I had attended a Donald Trump rally - then he wondered if my i-phone was on the blink.

I can happily report - neither. I went to the Hammersmith Apollo last night to see Stephen Fry for two absorbing hours. The picture doesn't really look like Stephen, but I can assure you it was.

Two hours of absorbing story-telling about the Greek myths, Harry Potter, Kate Bush and pretty much anything else that took his fancy. It was, of course, brilliant and very funny. And with no notes, slides, special effects or props of any nature. Just a chair and a table for his glass of water.

He set the scene perfectly, trying to create an atmosphere where we were all supposed to be gathered around a fire in the open air, somewhere nice and safe - and ready for a bit of tale-telling, just like people did, hundreds of years ago. The audience was enthralled. Not a rustle, cough or nervous twitch. Totally spellbound. Even mobiles were stowed in pockets and bags, without the audience being warned about this either. No one really wanted to check emails or texts for the whole evening. This was more important. It was truly amazing.

And the whole experience got me thinking about speeches or talks. The good, the average and the bad. The very bad.

I've always admired the television speaker, Dave Gorman. He has a regular series in the backwaters of Dave and covers all aspects of modern life, particularly on the internet - they are exactly the way I would love to do it. It's very different from Stephen, but fantastic in its own way. He uses slides, short poems, the odd film and clever messing about with the English language. It's the perfect presentation. I always sigh at the end and have a deep think about the times when I've been called upon to give a talk.

You see, I am my own worst critic. I hate seeing myself speak in public. I always initially growl about being a badly-dressed, overweight old man, staggering all over the stage, without a clue as to what is going on. No, I hear you cry. Not true!

Then I open my mouth and I cringe further. I never would have believed how high my voice is. It's most disconcerting.

BUT... I really try to make my talks enjoyable - after all, that's what a good talker should aim at. I've thrown excerpts of famous films at my audiences - mostly for shock value (fifteen 'f' words in a minute from Glengarry Glen Ross); I've had two colleagues throw teddy bears at me from various places in the audience. I was quite proud of that, especially because I didn't drop a single bear. Could have played for England that evening. I've given out prizes (a set of steak knives for the school that I considered had the most ruthless sales department) and even accidentally told a gaping audience that I loved visiting Moscow... completely forgetting I was in Kiev.

And... on one even worse occasion, I even tried speaking in Japanese. Yes, I really did. The least said about that the better. You see, I got cocky. And cockiness in speaking Japanese is always fatal. What I did was to confuse the Japanese word for 'Korean people' for the word for 'high security violent criminals'. Both sound pretty similar to my ears - not so, to my appalled audience in downtown Takadanababa (central Tokyo). Mothers of 11-year-olds all wanting a summer junior programme in Clacton-on-Sea don't want to hear that their kids will sharing the campus with Jack the Ripper and his mates.

I've watched some pretty dire talks too. No names mentioned, of course, but I sat through 50 horrendous minutes at a British Council somewhere, of a man with a voice like a broken electric radiator, talk through a selection of wrist-slittingly, dull spreadsheets and graphs, which somehow proved that the industry was doing quite well.

I've watched people dry up, go blank, start coughing (yes, a la Teresa) and even walk off the stage halfway through a talk because they couldn't take it anymore. I've seen full-blown arguments too, when someone in the audience objected to something the speaker said. On one occasion, it nearly came to blows at the end of a talk. Those were the good old days when International House directors of studies would fight each other with their fists, over definitions of the 'perfect' tense. Great times!

And... I've watched Richard Bradford - a man who I have infinite time for, especially when he has the courage to whip out his ukulele at the end of his talks on digital marketing in the education industry and give us several breathtaking verses of vintage George Formby. It doesn't get much more courageous than that!