A date with Sarah-Kate; Kate’s home truths

Sarah-Kate speaks up about a scary experience

Public speaking is a bit like tripe – most people want to throw up at the very thought of it, yet those who like it can’t understand what the problem is.

I’ve had to do a bit of public speaking in my time and I am definitely a throwerupperer. No matter how many courses I took or beta blockers I swallowed, I could never rid myself of the sensation that standing up in front of a group of people to talk was akin to walking into one of those scary armies from GameofThrones.

There’s a reason for this – it’s called fight or flight. Apparently, when we were cave people, the only time we ever did stand up in front of a large crowd was when we were walking into one of those scary armies from Game ofThrones.

Cave people didn’t go in much for speeches (“Here’s a graph showing how many Neanderthals dragged me into a cave over the past year”) so instead, their bodies physiologically prepared for them to either stay and fight the scary armies, or take to their scrapers and hightail it in the opposite direction.

That’s why your legs turn to jelly, your hands go clammy, your heart rate goes up and your breath shortens. This was all very well back in the rock age, but I know from personal experience that when you’re about to address a crowd of 2000 at a writers’ festival, it’s not that helpful.

Not that I’ve ever actually fought or flown. Indeed, for the most part, it’s all gone very well – in the end – but I still really, really, really don’t like doing it. Which is why I’m always so impressed when I see people who haven’t done the courses or swallowed the beta blockers stand up to address a group with natural charm and no sweating.

I’ve witnessed this at a couple of parties recently. And frankly, it’s often harder to address people you know and love than it is complete strangers or giants wielding ice picks. (I put that down to heckling. But then the Ginger and I had a heckler during our wedding vows, so we are possibly psychologically scarred by that.)

Anyway, at one party, the star of the show’s three daughters got up and read a rhyming speech that they’d prepared, which just brought the house down. At another, every speech from the party girl’s friends brought tears of either joy or laughter.

I even managed a few words on that occasion, but that was because I’d forgotten I’d said I would do it and only got one minute’s warning, which as it turns out is the way to go.

But another friend, who’d come from London, had not forgotten she had a speech to make and was sweating bullets. Worse, when she went to have a nervous wee before her big moment, she dropped her phone in the loo, killing it and all her notes.

Her toast, of course, ended up being about that and went down a treat. I guess cave people’s bodies didn’t have to worry about cellphone malfunctions.