What you say is so much more important than how you say it. A speaker without a powerful or melodious voice can register just as convincingly as a great orator as soon as the audience tunes into the fun and caring behind his words.

True, a little judicious advice on delivery technique can help smooth the edges without stifling individuality. Yet a great deal of so-called expert advice will remove the wonderfully imperfect distinctions about us and create unremarkable clones. So while this chapter will stress the importance of projecting positive language and having the right attitude to your speech, it will not put you in a strait-jacket of artificial presentation techniques.

Essentially, you just need to be yourself – but yourself made large. If you offer your homage, your humour and your heart to any audience, they cannot resist.

1 Finding Your Style

It is exceedingly difficult to discuss style and technique in general terms, since the ability to ‘hold an audience’, to be sober, sensible and sensitive, yet amusing is such a personal business. However, there are certain ‘rules’ and guidelines which appear to be universal. Here they are:

• Make your speech ‘yours’: did Elvis, Sinatra and Johnny Rotten all sound the same singing My Way? Of course not. The artist makes the crucial difference. So, too, does the speaker.

Whatever individual characteristics you have that are special to you should be nurtured and cultivated and worked on, for it is those personal and unique quirks of appearance, personality and expression that will mark you out as a speaker with something different to offer. And that is never a bad thing.

• Be conversational: sitting at leisure, with family, friends or colleagues, your conversation will be naturally relaxed and chatty, because that is the language of easy communication. When you make the bride’s father’s speech, the words and phrases you use should be more considered, imaginative, creative and rhythmical than your everyday language, yet the way you say them, the way you deliver your speech should remain unaffectedly relaxed and chatty.

If you ‘put on an act’, you will be perceived as phoney, boring, or lacking in personality. As a result, you won’t come over well. Certainly you may need to speak a little louder or make other concessions to accommodate the needs of your audience, but, in essence, nothing in your delivery style should change.

Casual conversation is not constructed in a literary way. You do not always finish your sentences. You repeat yourself. You use ungrammatical constructions – but you are obeying a different set of rules. You are obeying the rules of effective spoken communication which have been learnt, instinctively, down the ages. Don’t abandon these rules when you speak in public.

• Being heard: you must be audible. If you are not, all else is lost. If there is public address equipment available, find out how it works, get plenty of practice and then use it. If there is no sound-enhancing equipment, speak as clearly and as loudly as is necessary to be heard. If the only other person in the room was at the back, you would talk to him or her naturally, at the right level, without shouting or strain, by:

• keeping your head up

• opening your mouth wider than during normal speech

• using clearer consonants

• slowing down.

If you remember that you must be heard by that same person, at the back, during your speech, however many other people may be in the room, you will make those same four natural adjustments to your delivery.