Humour wins the day at Toastmasters club
The Benoni Toastmasters Club recently held its Humorous Contest at club level.
Four of the club’s speakers, Luke Gordon, Dave Walls, Michael Bratt and Johan Taljaard battled it out to secure one of the top two positions which would see them through to the next level of the competition, the area contest.
Taljaard walked away as the winner, with a speech that talked about how fathers nowadays need to be IT gurus in order to understand all the technology that comes with having a baby.
“From how the quality of ultra-sound pictures has improved dramatically over time, to baby monitors, motion sensors and even CCTV cameras, Taljaard had the audience in stitches with tales of his personal experiences,” said the club’s vice president of public relations, Refiloe Radebe.
For the competition, the speakers were tasked with preparing a five to seven-minute speech on a topic of their choice.
Besides the time limit, which would see a speaker disqualified if they were over or under the time limit, the other criteria speakers had to meet is that the speech had to be substantially original and humorous in nature.
It has to be a complete story, rather than a series of one liners.
Second place went to Bratt, who in his address, titled The Quirky Dog, recounted the tale of how he and his wife Robyn ended up with an eight-year-old, overweight, blind Labrador and the challenges that came with their new family member.
Toastmasters is a non-profit organisation which was started in America over 90 years ago.
It aims to teach people to be better speakers, communicators, leaders and listeners, skills which help a Toastmaster not only in their personal life but their professional one, too.
Benoni Toastmasters Club meets every second and fourth Wednesday evening of the month (excluding December), at the Benoni Lake Club, at 7pm for 7.30pm.
Visitors can look forward to the Area Humorous Contest, which is being hosted by the Benoni club on October 11.
To find out more, email Radebe at b2fifi@gmail.com
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