Typically, Toastmasters clubs all over the world hold for club contests each year. The International Speech contest in spring alongside the Evaluation contest. With the Humorous Speech contest and the Table Topic contest following in the autumn. This contest season is a very special one for London Victorians as it marks the first official contest in which the club is taking part.
Our club President Florian Bay chaired the humorous speech contest, assisted by timers Eddie and Yvonne, ballot counters Stephen, Magda and Fahad and contest chief judge Jide from Woodford Speakers.
The first humorous speech contest speaker was Thomas ‘The Russian Experience’ describing his adventure in a Russian spa and being welcomed by “you want some oak leaves!” The second speaker was Terry ‘You really are missing out by not having children!’ on how children make a relationship blossom anew with new chores and activities for everyone. Natalie followed on as third contest speaker with a speech ‘Digital and Dazed’ on the perils of the digital age, ranging from Tinder dating through to recording gigs on phone video cameras but never watching the recording again. Following on from her was Prateek ‘Adventures of Harry O’Neill’ telling about the Scottish pilot of the same name he met once from whom the best landings where those where “the plane can be reused afterwards!” The contest carried on with Edwin taking the stage ‘This is an Appeal’ urging us to fight a disease called ROTU (Rudeness On The Underground) whose symptoms include everything from falling asleep to wild hallucinations! John then took to the stage with ‘I hate’ on useless Facebook status updates from friends and one compulsively checks them. Our last contestant was Joyce speaking on ‘Can dreams be true?’
After a slightly longer than usual break. We moved to the club’s table topics contest chaired by Eleanor. The question that our contestants had to answer was “If you were another thing in this world, what would it be and why?”
Our first contestant Marina answered shoes, followed by Terry the wannabee savanna animal, Joyce as nothing less than Prime Minister. Fourth Table Topics speaker John answered a Chihuahua, followed by Prateek’s Genie, Edwin’s pub (specifically the Winsdor Castle pub) full of merry drunks and finally Natalie with a set of drums.
A short round of table topics followed before the results were announced. London Victorians first ever contest winners are as follows:
Humorous Speech Contest
First Place – Edwin At
Second Place – Terry P
Third Place – Thomas R
Table Topics Contest
First Place – Marina L
Second Place – Terry P
Third Place – John K
We wish the best of luck to all of our contestants representing the club at the Area 8 contest on Thursday 24th September in Ofgem’s offices.
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