Michael Heseltine was a barnstorming speaker, but his hand used to shake with nerves.
I keep the cards in my pocket so I can keep an eye on the audience as I speak.īlair got rattled and did what many do - he barrelled his pace. In the break, I lock myself in the loo and read through the prepared material, and the material based on what I have learned that evening. I work from cards, on which I have 10 headings. Don't go with a set-piece script - build into it what suits the occasion. What shall we talk about?" I was the next person on, and as his speech went wrong, I stood in the wings and modified mine. He should have torn up the speech and said, "Ladies, I've clearly got this wrong. He's a good impromptu speaker, but he stuck to the Autocue. Tony Blair speaking to the WI in 2000 arrived with a set text on an Autocue. Heckling is easy to deal with if you are an old hand: if the audience has heard the heckle, then respond to it, sharply and quickly. Public speaking is about energy - yours as a performer and theirs as an audience. I wear contact lenses and if I've forgotten them I will go back even 100 miles to get them, because you need to be able to see the whites of their eyes when you're speaking. If you are going to be a bit playful, first check with the person you are going to tease. There will be audiences that may require you to be politically correct and it may amuse you to be politically incorrect, but you are there to give pleasure to your audience, not to beat them over the head or upset them. Often you are speaking to quite a sophisticated audience, so don't assume that they are anything but. That dinner came on the eve of the announcement that US Navy SEALs had killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.I do my homework - last week I was in Frankfurt speaking at the flotation of a big aerospace company, and so I needed to know about aerospace, about the company, about German politics. Last year, the President told jokes at the expense of US real estate mogul Donald Trump, mocking his possible presidential ambitions. "Newt, there's still time man," he said to Gingrich, who was in the audience with his wife, Callista. Obama also took a shot at former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who has announced he would quit the Republican primary race. The clip showed images of the Obama family dog Bo, apparently miserable at being held captive by "European style dog socialism." A deep voice intoned: "American dogs can't afford four more years of Obama. A fake political attack ad rolled with a news clip of Romney defending himself against criticism for strapping the family dog, Seamus, in a crate on the top of the car during a family trip in 1983. Obama said he had expected a tough campaign but that one video had gone too far. He joked that the luxurious ballroom in the Washington Hilton hotel where the dinner was held was "what Mitt Romney calls a fixer-upper," a dig at Romney's sometimes clumsy references to his wealth. Obama, who faces re-election in November, is expected to be matched against Romney, a multimillionaire and former Massachusetts governor. Take Mitt Romney he and I actually have a lot in common," the President said, telling the crowd of Hollywood celebrities and Washington power players that both men trailed their wives in national opinion polls. "I'm not going to attack any of the Republican candidates. The black-tie dinner, informally billed as the "nerd prom," is the biggest social event of the year for Washington media and gives presidents a chance to show a lighter side. President Barack Obama poked fun at his likely presidential rival Mitt Romney and Republican opponents in Congress on the weekend, including a dig at Romney's treatment of a pet dog, at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
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