On Saturday The naked truth about public speaking

Read Martin’s column every week in the Western Morning News

THIS week I gave a talk to a local group that needed a speaker, breaking my own rule about public speaking which I gave up years ago for the reason that societies and organisations like to book someone months or even years ahead. I prefer life to be spontaneous.

If there’s a chance of a trip somewhere nice, or perhaps an exciting invitation, I like to be able to drop everything and go. The dilemma of saying: “Sorry, I can’t come because a year ago I agreed to give a talk to Little Nettledrop Rotary…” is something I never wish to face again.

Anyway, the secretary of this particular society emailed asking if I could fill-in last-minute, adding that his village hall had all the necessary equipment for computerised slideshows, etc. Being last-minute there wasn’t much chance of it getting in the way of anything else, so I duly spent an afternoon putting together a presentation based on my life and times as a food writer (as requested), complete with slides and photos.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find they had no projection equipment whatsoever! Talk about taking wind out of sails.

Digital presentations act as a prompt, so that you know exactly what you’re meant to be talking about as you work through your chat. Suddenly, I had nothing. No notes and no images or slide titles to help. But I did have an expectant audience who’d turned out on a chilly night specially to hear the old Hesp waffle on about something.

I sat there for a moment feeling perplexed – knowing I would have to deliver some sort of talk, no matter how disjointed or boring.

So waffle on is what I did. At least I knew the presentation equipment scenario was no fault of my own, and this was explained to the audience by the kindly secretary. I have never made a charge for public speaking, anyway, so you could say you get what you pay for.

The next day, to my enormous surprise, the group’s secretary emailed, and I cut-and-paste his exact words… “You gave us such a colourful evening! After you left everyone said your talk was one of the best – it was from the heart, not just facts and figures.”

So, apart from attempting to show off what a clever chap I am, what is my point here? Well, certainly not that. I never, ever, think I am clever – just a council-house kid who left his under-performing secondary modern school with only one O-Level. A fact that has haunted me all my working life. No… the much more humble thought that strikes me concerns the ability to be openly passionate when talking about the things you love. Perhaps because I was suddenly in a corner, I was able to talk with absolute freedom, and this increased my enthusiasm. I hope I was able to do so without polluting the narrative with personal boasts or any other kind of selfaggrandisement.

Working as a journalist has allowed me to watch many pompous people make fools of themselves and bore even the most enthusiastic audiences by blowing their own trumpets. Politicians, for example, do not seem to understand the concept of self-deprecation. Instead, they can rarely resist puffing themselves up and assuming airs of selfimportance.

And here’s the funny thing – there is something odd about humannature that urges us to want to believe in such twaddle, even though deep down inside we know the pompous personage in front of us is nothing but a popinjay.

One reason Boris is so popular is that he bucks the self-important trend by swapping pomp for schoolboyish charm. But we all know it’s just an act. Just like Putin’s toughguy image is an act.

Just look at the latter if you want a prime example of how ridiculous a self-regarding politician can appear in the cold light of day. In those last few television appearances before the Ukraine war, Vladimir Putin came across as some kind of Shakespearean joke-villain in the mode of Twelfth Night’s Malvolio – a character described as “vain, pompous, and authoritarian”. How unhinged he appeared, sitting at the end of a long table, 40 feet distant from whichever prime minister or foreign secretary had gone there demanding diplomacy and common-sense.

If Putin stood for election in a sophisticated and fair democracy, he would lose his deposit. No one would be convinced by his medieval rhetoric.

I apologise for starting this column with my own pathetic parish-level speech-making and then going on to mention two world-leaders, but I do so because the sad truth seems to be that if you are in the least bit downto-earth or self-deprecating you will never lead anything, let alone vast swathes of the population.

I cannot imagine Putin ever amusing a village garden society by telling them what a fool he’d been or how much he’d made of mess of things. I cannot imagine Boris being able to resist the temptation to bolster his electability by painting grand wordportraits of the future.

Telling it how it is or how it’s been, with utter truthfulness, is not something politicians go in for.

I can’t imagine Vladimir Putin ever amusing a village garden society by telling them what a fool he’d been or how much he’d made of mess of things