Kevin Bennison | Jackie Baker | Isaac Baker
Malvern Speakers report Jan 28 2020 _ Colin Jackson
Boris Johnson and Winston Churchill figured prominently at Malvern Speakers’ late January meeting: you just never know who may turn up at the club’s events! President Roger Granville set the ball rolling with a session of short unprepared Table Topics, in which he invited speakers to envisage Boris’s farewell phone call to various EU leaders. Winner by some distance was Isaac Baker, who had clearly been paying close attention to the previous week’s play at Malvern Theatres (‘The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson’). Despite himself being tall, slim and red-headed, he gave a brilliant impression of the Prime Minister’s mannerisms as he bid an imagined Brexit adieu to the Italian head of state.
Winston Churchill was represented in Mike Snoswell’s prepared speech, a re-creation of the wartime leader’s famous ‘blood, tears, toil and sweat’ oration to Parliament of May 13th 1940 – a brave attempt, including an impromptu cigar, which perhaps inevitably fell short of the great man’s inimitable cadences.
Steve Birch chose to repeat for club members the moving eulogy to Ray Roberts, which he had delivered at his funeral of this “Man of Malvern” earlier in the day. As well as his distinguished service to Malvern, as among other things as a Hills Conservator, Ray had been a close friend of Steve’s and his speech was laced with entertaining anecdotes about incidents in his life.
The Baker family scored for a second time when Isaac’s mother Jackie took the shield and ribbon for best prepared speech. This was an account of the ups and downs of her experiences as a volunteer puppy walker for Guide Dogs for The Blind, delivered with her customary smiling charm and illustrated by pictures of some of her canine ‘clients’.
President Granville had opened the meeting with some notable statistics relating to Malvern Speakers, which has qualified for the highest rating awarded by Toastmasters International to its affiliated clubs in every year since its formation in 2014. This distinction is enjoyed by fewer than 2% of the organisation’s 114,000 member clubs worldwide.
Next meeting will be at the Great Malvern Hotel on Tuesday February 11th at 7.30pm. Visitors – many of whom subsequently become club members – are welcome to come along. |