Wimbledon Speakers Club

It was almost standing room only at Wimbledon Speakers Club at this week’s meeting as a bumper crowd were in attendance for the annual Club Topics Contest.

Michael was in the Chair this week and gave us the icebreaker introduction where we all stood up, introduced ourselves and briefly shared a sporting mishap from our lives!

We then moved onto the usual Topics round where Michael went through the alphabet and simply gave participants a word talk about for two minutes on stage (Apples, Catastrophe, Dogs etc) and it was Sangia who ran out as the winner on this occasion, giving a great performance with her given topic of ‘Fried Food’, on only her second visit to the club – well done, Sangia! Sam was Topics evaluator on this occasion and made special mention of both Pung and Ken’s short speeches, noting the great progress that both had made in recent weeks.

Sangia wins this week’s Topics session

We then enjoyed listening to Sanija Limbu giving her maiden speech (Level 1 – ‘Making A Start’) which was given a strong pass by Bilwa, who in turn was making her first speech evaluation. We look forward to watching and hearing both Sanija and Bilwa build upon these great starts as the year unfolds.

Sanija gives her maiden speech at the club

After the break it was time for the main event of the evening – the Club Topics Contest 2018 – and we welcomed back WSC Alumni (and now running the FCA Club London), Barry Watts & Becky Bellars as special guests judges for the competition. The selected word that contestants had to talk about for 2 minutes was ‘measured’ and the judges praised all 9 that took part for the creative way in which they went about the task.

The chosen word for the contest is revealed!

After much deliberation, Barry announced that Arsh would be awarded third place, Ben the runner-up and John the winner for the way in which he used the word to talk about what it’s like to be a millennial in the world right now. Congratulations to all three and good luck to both John and Ben who will go on to represent Wimbledon in the Area Final on Saturday 24th February!

Congratulations and good luck in the Area Final to John!

Katherine rounded up a fantastic evening with the general evaluation, where in particular she praised the way that the Chair had handled proceedings with such a large audience to manage, ensuring that everyone had had the chance to practice their speaking skills.

We look forward to our next meeting on Wednesday 14th February (kick off 7.30pm) for more practice and progress! Everyone welcome – especially new visitors!