Wimbledon Speakers Club

Wednesday evening saw the last meeting of the calendar year at Wimbledon Speakers Club and the annual speech competition!

The meeting opened as ever with icebreaker introductions where everyone had to declare their favourite Xmas song, with Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas’ running out a clear winner!

We then moved onto the Topics round which this meeting had a festive theme, but with a twist! The Chair asked us all to start talking about our love for certain festive items such as brussel sprouts, New Year’s Eve and Christmas jumpers, but as soon as she rang the bell, the contestants had to switch direction and say how much they hated those very same items! This proved to be very entertaining with the bell sometimes ringing mid-sentence and speakers having to change tack very quickly! The winner was Arsh – his second time since recently joining the club.

It was then onto the main event of the evening – the speech contest – where we had 5 speakers who had chosen either ‘sowing seeds’ or ‘topsy turvy’ as the title of their speech. Ben kicked things off and chose topsy turvy which he used to talk about the London riots in 2011 and how he was living in New Cross at the time and the way they affected him and his opinion of London.

Frank came up next choosing sowing seeds, where he talked about his time working at Sainsbury’s in Croydon with people from different backgrounds and how he would love to give us all types of fruit and veg.

It was then Jo’s turn to speak, again with sowing seeds, where he gave various examples of how sowing seeds of change in his way of thinking have changed his life.

John chose sowing seeds and used this title to tell us about the three celebrity guests he would like to invite for dinner – Carol Vorderman, Jeff Stelling and Sir Michael Parkinson. The common theme here was how successful they have each became in their respective roles despite not having any contacts within the industry and how that was inspiring to John.

Last but not least came Josie, who spoke about the importance of sowing seeds for the future to create a positive change for yourself and the world and how her father arrived in the country with little more than a bag of clothes – this taught Josie that each person has everything they need to make a success of their lives. This proved to be a very thoughtful and inspirational speech which won the contest, as chosen by long-standing ASC member Gwyn Redgers, who provided a comprehensive speech evaluation. It was great to have such a stalwart of the ASC joining us on the evening.

A thoroughly enjoyable and successful evening was rounded off in traditional style, with a Christmas drink in the Antoinette Pub next door!

We look forward to meeting back once again in the new year on Wednesday 10th January (kick off 7.30pm) for more practice and progress! Everyone welcome – especially new visitors!