Tag Archives: microphone popping

Jeff Deist: optimistic.

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In Costa Mesa, California, 8 November 2014, the Mises Institute held a Mises Circle. These are one-day seminars of information concerning the Institute and its messages.

A few weeks ago we examined a speech made at this gathering by the Institute’s founder and Chairman, Lew Rockwell.  Today we are looking at a speech by the Institute’s President Jeff Deist.

Almost immediately we learn key things about Deist’s public speaking ability, namely that he has not properly learned how to do it. His microphone technique is essentially non-existent, and he is reading a script. The Mises Institute website tells me he regularly delivers keynote speeches – ye Gods!

He is too close to the microphone, so he pops and distorts horribly – particularly at the beginning. It takes two minutes (max) to teach someone to work a microphone infinitely better than this, and another fifteen to make them really skilled. It can take as little as two hours to free a speaker forever from any dependency on script or notes, and when thus liberated the fluency and potency of their delivery leaps up dramatically. I know there are misguided public speaking teachers who insist that a script is essential, and I have argued with some online. I no longer bother: they’re just wrong.

As the host for the day, with all the attendant welcoming and housekeeping ingredients that involves, Deist takes three and a half minutes to begin laying out his own stall. That’s not his fault: it’s the nature of the beast, but for our purposes it has the advantage of being three and a half minutes when we who are not attending the seminar don’t have to listen but can analyse his delivery. We can watch how he gets steadily freer, more fluent, more compelling and more persuasive during the gaps between looking down at his paper. It’s like watching horses run a steeplechase, with each look at his script being a jump which, far from helping him, actually slows him down and diminishes his power. It is such a pity.

His message is intriguing, particularly for me believing passionately in people and the sovereignty of the individual. I think that it automatically follows therefore that I believe in democracy, but he challenges that. I like my assumptions being challenged. His creed seems on the face of it to be a reductio ad absurdum of what I would regard as a rational standpoint. The Austrian school of economics appeals, as does freedom and small government, but no government…? I must go to the Mises bookstore page and get myself challenged by an anarchist.

Meanwhile my immediate challenge is this speech. Fascinating though I find the content, the speech itself is frankly dreary.  I know that I could transform it beyond measure in just a couple of hours with him; and in the process turn him into a real speaker for life.

Tom Holland addresses Islam

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On 25 May 2015, Tom Holland delivered the inaugural Christopher Hitchens lecture at the Hay Festival. He called it De-radicalising Muhammad. It was an appropriate title for a speech in memory of a man who was so articulate in his condemnation of organised religion in general and Islam in particular.

Holland begins at 1:55 and ends at 37:40. The rest is questions.

He begins with a tribute to Christopher Hitchens whom he never met. He tells us that he has been instructed that to be true to Hitchens’ memory his talk should be controversial. If as a non-Muslim you are speaking about Islam, or any aspect of it, you are hard-pressed not to be controversial. Holland highlights this, while nevertheless pointing out with examples that Hitchens courted controversy on this subject with some eagerness.

“Nothing to do with Islam…” that is the stock phrase, trotted out by politicians after every new abomination committed by jihadists. Holland cites this as an attempt to de-radicalize matters, but also shows why it is counter-productive. Anyone, particularly a non-Muslim, who says those words is implying that he or she knows the nature of authentic Islam, a claim which is transparently absurd when even Muslim scholars can’t agree. He proceeds with a history lesson that starts with the life of Muhammad himself, including matters of contention surrounding its details.

From where I stand, as a faintly bemused outsider, Holland seems to address this history in about as balanced a manner as is possible, and his ultimate target slowly becomes clear. The fulcrum of the speech, the point at which we finish with the background and venture into a suggested route to a solution, arrives at 16:54 with the words, “Unless Islam can draw sustenance from its own traditions to purge itself of what is going on in its name then really there’s very little hope”.

I don’t want to say any more in description of this excellently structured and argued piece of erudition, because it’s time for me to don my rhetor hat.

Holland is doubly equipped with microphones. He has a face mic, and stereo mics on the lectern. One of those sound systems is providing the feed for this video, and I’m pretty certain it’s the one on the lectern. It is ‘splashing’. Splashing is a cousin of popping (and there’s a tiny bit of popping too). It is when sibilant consonants, principally the ‘s’ sound, give a distorted splashing sound on the output. It’s a pity when he is delivering such good stuff. Slap on the wrist for the sound-engineer.

He has a script. You may think it barely matters when he merely glances at it, and you’d be right to a degree. He does handle the script extremely skilfully, but still it detracts from his delivery. Occasionally he quotes someone else’s words and then I have no problem with it, but too much of his looking down is comfort-blanket stuff. Watch an instance when his eyes go down and ask yourself if he really needed to read those particular words to speak them. Most of the time the answer will be no.

If you want fully to appreciate the difference in quality of delivery when he addresses his script and when he doesn’t, watch a sustained period when his eyes stay up and he shoots a section from the hip. There is one such between 31:30 and 33:20. In it he is subtly more engaged with his audience than the rest of the time. More importantly (to him) he is every bit as articulate and coherent, employing the same high quality of phrasing, as when he is reading. It is this that he doesn’t quite trust himself on. He feels he has a need to underpin his natural fluency with the written word. He is wrong, but I suspect he would take some persuading.

For all that Tom Holland is an impressive speaker, and this is an important and valuable speech.

Bronwyn Oatley: a star speaker in the making

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A reader of this blog referred me to the 2013 student commencement speech at Middlebury College, Vermont.

In the first minute I was struck by the quality of the speaking which is good enough for me to get really picky; but I could not at first discern what made this so particularly outstanding. I soon learnt.

The speaker is Bronwyn Oatley. She delivered this speech two years ago, so I am critiquing a time-capsule. I wonder how good she is now.

She has learnt her first few sentences. Memorized words sound slightly different from true shooting from the hip, but I am not complaining. It is a good plan as a hump-buster, though her hump lasts a little longer than the bit she has memorized. Again, this is not criticism: very few would spot the nervous symptoms, but I’m paid to do so.

She needs to learn to not pop the microphone. Almost every ‘p’ she utters causes the mic to pop, and it’s a distraction. Never point the mic at your mouth, or your mouth at the mic. Speak across it, not at it.

Her formal opening concerns a quote from G.B.Shaw. A smile forms on my face because many years ago I helped someone prepare a speech based on this very quote. It’s a beauty and I commend her choice.

This is good, clear, confident speaking, and beautifully tailored to her audience. There’s an early section full of in-jokes and reference to college events. These obviously mean nothing to me, and allow me to concentrate on the effect she is having on her audience. The staff members behind her, particularly the man on her left, are enjoying every nuance. The audience in front of her responds exactly as it should. Ultimately this, and not the pontification of someone like me, is the only test that matters.

At 4:27 she begins a good, long anaphora series – “I’m talking about the unreasonable…” This is well-constructed stuff, though she is not quite confident enough of her structure to dispose of her notes. The only fully justified time to look at paper has so far been when she overtly read a quote from the campus newspaper.  Other glances down at the lectern are essentially comfort stuff. In one hour I could have her throwing away paper for ever.

At 5:17 she does something brave. She gets personal and talks about herself. This is difficult to do at the best of times, but she makes it not the best of times by addressing the matter of her own sexuality. She recounts her journey of self-discovery and her coming out to her mother. Though she is talking about herself she arranges that Middlebury College be the hero of the story. The stability and support of the community is what saw her through the crisis.

If a pin dropped it would be deafening. Even when she momentarily tries to lighten the mood with a little personal humour the audience is so moved that silence prevails. The balance line between paying a sincere tribute and lapsing into mawkishness is very narrow, but she finds it. This section is quite remarkable.

She breaks the spell at 7:18. The man on her left smiles, and within seconds the hall is full of laughter and applause. She plays this audience like a violin.

At 9:30 she signals her closing by returning to that G.B.Shaw quotation. Every one of my trainees will testify how much I like it when speakers pair their openings and closings – the matter comes up at every course. It is elegant and professional. It closes the circle and cues the applause. Bronwyn closes beautifully… apart from the microphone popping.

John Waters: The People’s Pervert

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On 30 May, 2015, John Waters delivered a Commencement Address to students at Rhode Island School of Design. I am indebted to a reader of this blog, and friend, Duncan Goldie-Scot for drawing it to my attention.

I discourage speakers from trying to get a laugh out of a hierarchical hello [hh]. This is because, by their very nature, these things nearly always crop up on heavyweight occasions. Here we have a speaker who is of the same mind. He has obviously been brought in to be as subversive as possible, yet he delivers his hh dead straight. He beams at the audience’s applause immediately the hh finishes, but he doesn’t monkey with it during the saying.

Immediately thereafter the subversion begins. He launches into an ethos the equal of which none of us is likely to have heard before or will hear again. Waters is studiously one of a kind and wants us to know it. He quotes an epithet attached to him by the press, “The Prince of Puke”. Also did you think I dreamed up that title above? It is lifted, untampered, from this speech.

There is an interesting detail, though. He concludes the ethos by quoting that People’s Pervert title, and then, “I am honoured to be here today with my people”. This is instantly greeted by whoops and applause from the students. Waters returns another beaming smile; but whereas the beam that concluded the hh was full of triumph and delight, this one is rather shy.

He launches into an account of his extraordinary career, “I wanted to be the filthiest person alive!” That pretty well sums it up. His message to the students is that they should in their work be true to themselves, however mad and artistically disruptive that might appear to the rest of the world.

The students lap it up, and presumably the school staff booked him with their eyes open, but I wonder how the students’ parents are enjoying it. I foresee family arguments wherein a need to support themselves fights against a compulsion to create things for which the world is not ready. Some of these students will earn good and secure money designing for large corporations, others may travel today’s equivalence of painting feverishly in the South of France, fighting against mental illness, cutting off an ear, dying penniless and leaving a legacy of work that will keep auction houses in a manner to which they want to be accustomed. Most will hover somewhere in between, jealous of the ones on the extremes.

That is the nature of art and the tragedy of artists. I’ve known many: even some fairly mad ones. You might expect the most outlandish, the ones that fearlessly produce stuff that seems to make no sense at all or that outrages your sensibilities, to be hard-nosed and thick-skinned. Not so. In my experience, the crazier they are the more insecure. And that takes me straight back to the shy smile that John Waters gave the warmth of the students’ welcome. He’s been hugely successful, but I see vulnerability. Perhaps it is that which helps to make this speech not just funny but so appealing.

I just wish he hadn’t thought he had to read it. Also, if you are going to say “Prince of Puke” and People’s Pervert” you need to learn how not to pop the microphone.

Andrew Klavan pops

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In March 2013 Andrew Klavan delivered a talk at a David Horowitz Wednesday Morning Club meeting in Los Angeles.

Klavan is the author of A Killer in the Wind. I came across him in one of his Revolting Truth videos while searching for interesting speakers.  Good writers often fail to make good speakers, as the techniques are subtly different.

For the purposes of this blog I was torn between two speeches. I settled on the one below, though this one is interesting too.

“I want to talk about sex and German philosophy.” Delivered at 0:45 this gives every appearance of Klavan laying out his stall. The audience falls about laughing, as he intended, but actually he does talk about sex and German philosophy.

Klavan has everything going for him as a speaker. He has a very good, wonderfully resonant, voice which he uses well. He has plenty to say because he is passionate about his message. He is not only articulate but coherent to a fault. He uses humour skilfully, inserting it fairly sparingly into the proceedings but delivering it well enough to harvest some very good laughs. Do you sense the probable advent of a “but”?

But…

He is oblivious to a glaring fault. In my experience the world at large is oblivious (consciously at least) to this fault whenever it occurs – even though it is ubiquitous. I’ve mentioned it often in this blog before, but I will continue till audiences demand its elimination.

He pops. There: I’ve just ruined your enjoyment of this speech. He pops relentlessly. Now that you are conscious of it you will hear little else.

How big is that auditorium? I ask because it is possible that he is not amplified to the room, but the microphone is there only to provide a feed for this video. That being the case he is unable to hear the popping: the fault belongs to the sound engineer. That’s no excuse: if you aspire to being a competent speaker you should never let your mouth and the microphone point at each other. Never speak at a microphone, speak across it. Point the mic at your throat, your eyes, anywhere but at your mouth.

The world is full of ignorant bozos, masquerading as technicians, who are likely to point the microphone at your mouth (it happened to me only last week). Don’t put up with it! Reset the microphone. If the ignorant bozo argues (it happened to me only last week) educate him. Explain that when you utter a percussive consonant a fast-moving column of air is generated which, if it hits the diaphragm of the microphone head-on, will cause a ghastly popping sound. Don’t give way.

You may protest that if audiences don’t notice it doesn’t matter, so if only Brian would shut the … would be quiet about it everything would be OK.

They do notice: just not consciously. If Klavan’s mic were tipped just five degrees upwards he would make an infinitely cleaner and sweeter sound, and the audience would be happier. They might not know why, but they’d be happier.

Spread the word!

 

Robert Carter frustrates with brilliance.

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The Heartland Institute hosted ICCC9 – the ninth International Conference on Climate Change – in Las Vegas from 7–9 July 2014. On 8 July, Prof. Robert Carter delivered a talk entitled Why NIPCC Matters.

As far as I am concerned, NIPCC matters because it shows its workings. If you don’t know what I am talking about, you didn’t read my previous posting.

In my late sixties, I still have a full head of hair. Sometimes I wonder why. Too often I am faced with something that fills me with hair-tearing frustration. This brilliant speech is just such an example.

It is persuasively, authoritatively and articulately argued. He backs up his arguments with chapter and verse. He has structured it all around a beautifully conceived narrative theme of pieces of legendary art, ranging from Salvador Dali to Antony Gormley. He delivers it all with a voice that is clear, expressive and confident. As far as I can establish, he has no paper on that lectern. And yet…

Well, just look at that ‘still’ from the video! That picture shows you two of the three things that have me writhing. In that previous paragraph I very carefully implied – but did not say – that he has no script. He does have a script.

It’s on his bloody slides! 

What is worse he has no slave screen in front of him; so he has to turn away from the audience in order to read all those bloody words off the bloody slides on the bloody wall behind him. Ye Gods!

And the missing thing? – the other irritant that causes me to writhe, the third one that the picture doesn’t show? He is popping. Every so often an explosion detonates as he speaks directly into the microphone. It almost makes me want him to turn his head back towards the wall. And as if that weren’t enough, a hand periodically collides with the microphone to make a still louder noise.

Let us be clear here, and give credit where it is due. This is a brilliant and important speech, delivered by a man who oozes learning, sincerity, charisma and a wealth of obvious speaking ability. The concept of using examples of art to illustrate points is elegant and inspired. The structure of the speech is somewhere between good and very good. The ending perhaps needed something more – and not the final crash from the microphone.

But the staging of this wonderful speech is an abomination! Any trainee of mine watching it would be in hysterics. They have all had paper torn from their hands and verbiage torn from their slides. I know some that have virtually sworn off slides altogether (though Carter definitely needs some slides, if only to show his pieces of art.) They have all experienced the liberation of facing nothing but their audience and breathing the oxygen of that connection.

Getting rid of the microphone problem is slightly more complicated. A clip-on radio mic would have removed the popping; but the unruly hands that sometimes hit the microphone are part of his ebullient personality. An ebullient personality is something you monkey with at your peril. I can’t come up with an answer to that at this distance.

Oh how I’d like an hour alone with him!

Walter Russell Mead and flawed paper

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At the City College of New York, on April 15, 2013, Walter Russell Mead delivered the inaugural Anne & Bernard Spitzer Lecture in the Colin L. Powell Center. It was entitled “America’s Asia pivot at a time of upheaval”. There’s a catchy title for you.

Mead begins at 4:20, and ends at 48:57 for Q&A but I would urge you first to watch his introduction by Rajan Menon. Even a professor of political science needs to learn about microphone technique if he is to fulfill this function properly. It has been several months since I last had need to moan here about someone popping on a microphone, but Menon more than makes up the shortfall. How hard would you have to work to pop more than this? What he has to say is interesting and provides a good background for what is to come, but he leans in towards the microphone to ensure that his percussive consonants have his column of breath unerringly hitting the microphone’s diaphragm every time. His aim is flawless.

He commits another error. Leading applause from the lectern feels right, looks wrong and sounds worse because the microphone compounds the felony.  Who would have thought there were so many little things to know?

Mead is taller than Menon so the microphone is aimed just south of his beard. Furthermore he doesn’t lean in to the microphone. As a result we finally hear the name ‘Spitzer’, and words like ‘policy’ or ‘polarization’, without a pop. This continues till 6:49 when Mead adjusts his microphone, and in the process the popping makes a nostalgic return – but only partially. He stands up, doesn’t lean into the microphone, and consequently pops a little less than Menon. A better microphone might eliminate it altogether, but in the meantime it’s there.

The issue being discussed is globally important. It comes from a respected commentator. It is being imparted to a knowledgeable audience in a specialized faculty within a respected seat of learning. Why then am I dwelling on this small detail?

Precisely because of all the above.

Were this a published document which Mead had written, and the paper was so transparently thin that the reader was constantly distracted by seeing other writing through what he was reading, and of such poor quality that it kept tearing when the page was turned, it would not be doing justice to the subject matter – just as in this case.

There is more to public speaking than merely an ability to convey concepts. Mead manifestly knows his subject and has much of importance to say. He argues his case skilfully and very compellingly, he shoots it spontaneously from the hip, with occasional histrionic outbursts that spice up the experience. It is very interesting and I commend this as a speech to be watched.

I just bemoan that it is printed on flawed paper.

Sachin Tendulkar – a natural and a delight

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Thanks to ABP Majha there is on YouTube a speech by the legendary Indian cricketing batsman, Sachin Tendulkar.  Sadly I am unable to tell you when or where the speech was delivered, but it is clear that it is a speech of thanks upon his being honoured with the Order Of Australia. Whatever else anyone may say about the game of cricket, it surely is to its credit and that of its players that it fosters the sort of spirit that heaps honours upon distinguished opponents.

Our first glimpse of him in this video finds him adjusting the microphone. What a pity he did it wrong!  Had he pointed it higher, perhaps at his eyes, we would have been spared the occasional popping.

How dare someone who is gifted with such gigantic sporting talent also be so naturally good at speaking! This speech is a delight.

He is slightly nervous at the beginning; and he understandably chooses to bust his hump with an effusive thankfest. At 0:38 he looks skywards as if to seek strength and inspiration, and then launches into an eminently appropriate theme – his association with Australia.

Not only does he shoot the whole thing from the hip, but he has enough inner confidence to be prepared to be seen to search for words, give pauses their full natural life and address his audience with the sort of conversational sincerity that is today’s style. It’s a beautiful piece of speaking, tailored perfectly for an occasion such as this.

All the best structures are simple. This one could not be simpler – it’s essentially autobiographical.

He tells a story about how he was invited to travel to Australia to be a special guest at the 90th birthday party of Sir Donald Bradman, perhaps the only batsman in history to be Tendulkar’s superior. The story has a punch line that draws a huge laugh from his audience; but, and you’ll have to trust me on this, it is not speaker-proof. If he’d miss-timed that punch line he would have killed the laugh.

I find myself pondering on something. I am of the school of opinion that says that a large percentage of someone’s talent consists of a fluid exuded from the brow. Tendulkar was born with a phenomenal natural ability to hit a ball, but he was not born doing it. The man worked hard to maximise his talent. Likewise he has a natural ability as a speaker, but he was not born doing that either.

How much of what we see in this speech is the result of study and work? It’s very difficult to tell … except he made that elementary mistake at the beginning with the microphone. It may be that he could suffer from the widespread problem of the Natural. For an explanation of what I mean, see Peter Schiff here. When he retires from serious cricket, he will remain a considerable celebrity, and obviously invited often to speak. If he relies too heavily on his natural ability he could come unstuck sometime. Anyone who has done that will confirm it to be a very unpleasant experience. I hope he takes the trouble to consolidate the skill.

P.S. Among other things, Tendulkar is one of the relatively few batsmen to have scored a hundred centuries in First Class cricket. This posting is the hundredth on this blog.

Popping!

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Yesterday I explained and enlarged upon my impatience with the practice of reading a speech from a script. I also told how there would be more examples in the next couple of weeks of speakers who would illustrate how much better they performed when shooting from the hip.

Today I want to focus on another matter that seems to have trended in this blog – and is destined to trend some more. I hate microphone popping. This is the name given to the little explosive sounds made by your percussive consonants – particularly ‘P’s – if you speak too directly into the microphone.

I’ve been trying to cast my mind back more than two decades to the days before I was trained for working on radio. One of the key things we were taught was how to prevent popping. I undoubtedly then became more sensitised to the sound; but how much did I mind it before?  I don’t remember. The reason this concerns me is that it may be that most people never consciously notice popping – till a busybody like me comes along, points it out, and ruins everything for them.

Nevertheless, even if they do not consciously pick it up, their subconscious will register whether one speaker just makes a more pleasant sound than another. My trainees quickly pick up on my argument that it is as easy to do things right as wrong; and because many of them are senior business people who are delivering presentations whose success or failure could make the difference of huge amounts of money, the few percentage points either way, made by ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, can  be pretty critical.

The key to correct microphone technique is not to speak into a microphone, but to speak across it – or at least anywhere into its arc of sensitivity except into the thing itself. It’s the sudden assault of a column of your breath that makes the pop. Don’t do what Boris did in that example speech covered last week. The stereo mics had been aimed at his eyes – which should have been fine – but at the beginning of the speech he wrenched them down to point at his mouth. Aaagh! Wicked man!

You’ve seen microphones with sponge balls on them. That sponge is designed to make the mic more forgiving of bad technique than it would be otherwise. But it won’t forgive the worst; and anyway why not develop habits that give it nothing to forgive? Right is as easy as wrong.

If you find yourself in a TV studio, and a sound engineer has clipped a lapel microphone on you, microphone technique no longer applies: you have no choice but to put yourself in that engineer’s hands. Likewise if they equip you with an ear-set – one of those things that look as if you have a boil on your cheek. You will be asked to say something for a level check. The only thing you have to worry about is that the volume you use for that level check is near enough the same as you use when on air. Seems simple, but I could tell you stories…!

At any rate you should stand by for a severe rant coming soon in this blog, because someone who used to be the British Prime Minister, speaking at a conference, is wearing a lapel mic. He is not popping, but badly ‘splashing’. That is another horror, wherein sibilant consonants – particularly ‘S’ – cause distortion in the sound system. As I stated earlier, with a lapel mic you are in the hands of the sound engineer who, in that case, should have been put out of our misery.

As you might have gathered, we have fun and games coming soon!  I hope you find them entertaining and helpful.

Talking Heads and Popping

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Goodbye November: hello December.

Regular readers – if such a new blog can actually yet be said to have regular readers – will probably already have noticed two distinct trends emerging in the speech critiques so far posted.  They are my impatience with those who read their speeches from scripts (what I call ‘talking heads’) and with those whose microphone technique is so poor that their percussive consonants cause popping sounds to punctuate their speeches.

If you had begun to wonder whether this indicated that I was possessed with a narrow range of just two obsessions, then kindly stand in line behind me.  I have long wondered that also.  But the more speakers and speeches I hear – and, as you might expect, I have already heard more of both than any sane person should expect in several lifetimes – the more I find that these are by far the two most widespread errors.  Furthermore, to add to my frustration, they are both easily remedied.

Talking Heads.

In these critiques I always try to find examples wherein you get the comparison of seeing the same person both reading his speech and then at some other time ‘shooting from the hip’ as I call it.  I hope that you thus get to see and marvel at the transformation.  It is not just a minor detail: it puts the speaker immediately into another class.

When people are asked about speakers or speeches that impressed them, a comment that nearly always comes out is along the lines of, “He spoke for twenty minutes without once referring to any notes.”  That suggests it to be a rare skill and therefore a premium bonus.  It is not – or should not be – a premium bonus.

I have lost count of the number of times I have had the following said to me, “You’ll never get me to be able to do without a script”.  (This comes out often at the preliminary meeting that I usually have with a prospect trainee.)

For more than twenty years I have uttered the same reply – and it remains true to this day, “If I don’t, you’ll be the first.”

The skill boils down to two simple principles –

  • You need to know how, and
  • You need to know you can.

It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you learn the first of those, you are never going to dare try it ‘in anger’ unless and until you know you can.  So if I conduct a course with you I not only explain how, but also I very thoroughly prove to you that you absolutely and easily can.  In my book The Face & Tripod I cover the first element, and make suggestions on how you can deal with the second.  I admit that the result may not be as secure as doing a course with me, but it is one hell of a lot cheaper!

I don’t care who you are: you – reading this – can make a speech without using paper.  I say that with total confidence.  You could make a twenty-minute speech without reference to any script or notes.

So what price now “a premium bonus”?   It’s not a bonus: its absence is a grotesque failing.  And as you have already seen in this blog the failing is appallingly widespread – even among those who are actually paid money to speak!.  I’d love to change the universal attitude to paperless speaking.  It should not be regarded as a rare skill belonging only to special people: it should be the norm.  Those who make speeches from scripts should be regarded as sad numpties beyond the pale.

I admit in my book that there are occasions and good reasons when there is no escape – you have to use a script.  But those who have learnt to do without manage scripts better.  Look back at Boris from a couple of days ago.  He was using a script, but I forgave him.  It wasn’t because he was Teacher’s Pet (remember I bollocked him for popping his microphone): it was because he spoke as if spontaneously.  And there was a reason for that.   It sounded spontaneous because it was spontaneous.  Look back at his video and you’ll see he manages with only occasional glances at the script to keep him on his speech-writer’s track.  He is shooting from the hip.

In the next week or so we’ll have an example of a sitting British MP, with videos of two speeches: one where he had to have a script and one where he didn’t   The difference is dramatic.  We also have two examples from a recent British Prime Minister, one speech with a script and one without.  The difference is even greater.

Tomorrow I hope to look at microphone popping.