Public speaking preperations

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 17/12/08 at 04:12:41 pm

I agreed to give a talk months ago in Birmingham to a LGBT pagan group in Birmingham. I was starting to wish I never as this sort of thing always puts me in a strange sort of mood for the week preceding it. Thankfully after a long chat with the organiser I feel pretty good about it, well ok about it anyhow.

I have a love hate relationship with public speaking, I hate it before hand and always want to run off and not do it. I get very, very nervous which in turn makes me a little short tempered at times, even during the talk at times. It is most odd. Afterwards I am walking on air for a couple of days, so it does seem worth it in the end. Especially after a good talk. (We did give one very bad talk, and I won’t mention it here needless to say I still shudder about it now)

The thing with this one is that it will be the first that I have done by myself. This makes the preparation slightly different that usual. What usually happens is that Dave and I will argue about who’s house we practice in. When we finally decide we go through the talk together, taking the subjects that we both know the best to talk about. This means that Dave has become more of an expert than I have in certain areas and visa versa and that when either of us flounder the other helps them out. So what happens when I flounder here, well I guess I have to muddle through. It is both an exhillarating and terrifying thought.

I was very glad to have Dave sitting next to me when we spoke on Radio 4′s today program and on BBC Breakfast earlier in the year as I was white with fright.  That was certainaly the single most terrifying moment of my life. Since then I have spoken on live radio a few times. The last time I got an hour long slot on local station BCFM. On a side note I notice that Ed Stourton has been sacked from the Today program, I met him when we went on there and I can’t say that I feel sorry for him. He did not even look up when we entered the room, let alone say hello in short I thought he was a self centred twat.  John Humphies did and he even came out of the studio to say good bye, the other bloke their did at least nod his head too. I wonder if the fickle media world is not entriely that fickle, I hear rumours that the nice people tend to stay.

Well I am putting off preparing the talk just to write this so I had better get on and bloody well write it instead of adding to the already flooded pool of showbiz gossip.

Oh and the talk well if you are interested it is happening on the 22nd of December from 8pm at the Wellington Hotel Bristol Street Birmingham. It cost nothing, I promise to try and be interesting and it won’t be like the talk I try not mention – the mistake I made with that one was thinking I could talk off the top of my head. I learnt the hard way, you can’t.

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