Meetings at work and socially are going online. How much time do you need to prepare a humorous speech? Mark Twin said, 'It take three week to prepare a good impromptu speech'.
Humorous Quotation About Writing
Another quotation attributed to Mark Twain, (and Pascal and others) is:
'I am sorry to write you such a long letter. I did not have time to write a short one.'
Humorous Quottion On Speaking
The American President with the handily alliterative name, Woodrow Wilson,
A member of the Cabinet congratulated Wilson on introducing the fashion of short speeches and asked him how long it took him to prepare speeches. He said: "If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now"
Mark Twain
Humorous Quotations on Remembering Speeches
The human brain is a marvellous things. it starts working the moment you are born. It continues working until the moment you stand up to speak.
Quotation on Plagiarism
As for quoting and misquoting others, playwright Oscar Wilde said to the painter Whistler, 'I wish I had said that."
Whistler assured him, "You will, Oscar, you will."
More Humour Needed
At Toastmasters International speakers' training we are taught that if you tell a joke, ideally against yourself, you can make a connection with the audience. This helps reduce the stress of the speaker and audience, creates rapport, break down barriers, put people in the audience at ease, make them more receptive to a serious subject or a sales pitch.
When is humour not appropriate?
Jokes in another language can lose some of your audience. You can explain dialect words, or put up the translation in subtitles.
Subtitles
How do you add subtitles? - If you don't know how, or don't have time use clips in which the person who made the clip has inserted the subtitle.
Less Humour Needed
Airport
Telling airport staff you have a bomb.
A joker might protests, 'It was only a joke!'
Ambulance
He or she is surprised at being frisked and arrested and that staff are upset or angry. You mother or best friend might know it's a joke. How does a stranger know it's a joke? They can't be sure of a complete stranger's intentions until they check. Checking wastes their time.
Police
Phoning the police to make a spoof report for a prank on April 1st. (Again wastes their time. Risk, they might think a serious call is just a joke.)
Would you phone the ambulance service to ask for an ambulance when it is not needed? Surely not. this would waste the ambulance staff time, divert resources from serious cases, make ambulance staff less inclined to believe the seriousness of a genuine caller.
The same applies to police.
Next time you phone the police about a real emergency, they might think it's that joker again.
You could also get a criminal record. Wasting police time. Interfering with justice. Lying to the police. Making false reports.
Will a court believe you?
Phoning somebody of another religion to tell them you want to convert.
Jokes On The Internet
A spoof meeting. A spoof law. To let people know it is a joke, the obviously nonsense end must be clearly absurd and follows very fast so epople don't stop reading, share, or rush off to act on the information without reading to the end.
How does somebody know you are joking? If you wear a clown costume, or funny hat, or talk to a puppet, the audience might guess that what you say is a joke and not serious.
Making jokes about death to somebody you don't know who is bereaved.
Jokes About Mothers-in-law
Jokes About the Aged
If you are young, and the elderly in the audience think they are being mocked. Better to tell a joke about what you will be like when you are old, or how your elderly parent or grandparent frustrated you or tricked you, or even one elderly person and another, so even if one is stupid at least one of them is smart.
Self-deprecating humour
This could still annoy others like yourself. you. For example, supposing you are a doctor and tell a joke about killing off patients. That might not go down well with other doctors and patients.
You might have to set the story twenty years ago, when you were a student doctor or nurse. that could make it even funnier. But you should, should, could, might, still try it out on some students and nurses and patients before releasing it to the public.
Or maybe just leave it a day. Re-read the news, and ask yourself whether every single newspaper reader worldwide would find it funny.
Supposing you are a plumber and tell a story of how you cheated a customer. What if a member of the audience is a plumber trying to get work. They might feel that you are bringing plumbers into disrepute. What if you are Jewish and tell a story against Jews? Other Jews might feel you are attacking Jews and bringing them into disrepute.
What if you tell a joke against Americans or Trump and you are American?
Money
Pretending you have been scammed might seem funny. But you need to reveal the punchline immediately, not prolong the joke over a series of texts, the last of which might not be picked up until later.
A friend of mine sent me messages throughout the evening saying he was being asked for money, and was thinking of borrowing from a loan shark. I was very agitated.
What if a friend or relative of the listener has a relative who has been scammed? Another mutual friend had just made a police report about a love scam. I was very anxious that a member of my group was going to be borrowing from others, giving away our money, or endangering himself. This was a complete distraction from my work, and an online meeting in which I was taking part. I was not pleased.
The advantage of jokes about yourself is that they are original.
However, many speakers get away with quoting a line or two from a famous comedian, especially a dead one who won't be aggrieved
Famous one-liners
Dating
Single and ready to mingle
Marriage
I didn't know what happiness was until I married. Then it was too late.
.....
How many husbands have I had? My own or other people's?
Zsa Zsa Gabor (Lived to 100. Had 9 husbands. Jewish parents, converted to Catholicism.)
All from Wikiquote:
- Husbands are like fires - they go out when unattended.
- A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.
- I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
- I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.
- How to Catch a Man, Keep a Man, and Get Rid of a Man (Doubleday, 1970)
Death
Most Americans are more afraid of public speaking than dying.
Most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the funeral speech.
Public Speaking
You brain starts working from the day you are born. It only stops working the first time you stand up to give a speech.
Rude and Innuendo
'Miss West - there are 21 men waiting to see you.'
Mae West: 'I'm tired. Send one of them home.'
Is that a gun in your pocket - or are you just pleased to see me?
Mae West
When I'm good, I'm very good. When I'm bad, I'm better.
When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity.
- Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.
- Response to an exclamation, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!" in Night After Night (1932). She later used Goodness had nothing to do with it as the title of her autobiography (1953).
- Why don't you come up sometime and see me? … Come on up, I'll tell your fortune.
- She Done Him Wrong (1933); this statement has become widely misquoted with the paraphrase: "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
- I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported.
- When I'm good, I'm very good. When I'm bad, I'm better.
- I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
- It's not the men in your life that matters, it's the life in your men.
- Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before.
- Klondike Annie (1936) Sometimes quoted as: "When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."'
- A man in the house is worth two in the street.
- Belle of the Nineties (1934)
- When women go wrong, men go right after them.
- She Done Him Wrong (1933)
- One and one is two; two and two is four; and "five will get you ten" if you work it right!
- My Little Chickadee (1940)
- I feel like a million tonight. But one at a time.
- To a young actor: How tall are you without your horse? Six foot, seven inches. Never mind the six feet. Let's talk about the seven inches!
- I'm the kinda girl who works for Paramount by day, and Fox all night
- To her British lover about to climb in bed with 80-something Mae: She said that she hoped soon to be able to say what Paul Revere said — 'The British are coming'. This was the last one-liner Mae ever uttered on film.
- Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
- When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity.
- Quoted in "For Women, Monologues They Haven't Heard" by Susan Pomerance, Dramaline Publications (1985)
- Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
- #149 in The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2006) by Robert Byrne
- Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
- #684 in The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2006) by Robert Byrne
- I've been in more laps than a napkin.
- #685 in The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2006) by Robert Byrne
- She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
- #832 in The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2006) by Robert Byrne
- I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs.
Her fake high heel shoes which made her look taller and gave her a distinctive walk.
How can you tell if a joke is appropriate? Imagine you are on the receiving end of the joke, and that you are the same as one of the characters in the story.
One club I went to asked everybody in the room to say their name and tell a one-line joke. This works best if you warn everybody in advance.
At a recent meeting of Braddell Heights Advanced, I offered one of my members the role of joke master. His job was to tell everybody the difference between dry humour and slapstick, tell a joke, and invite others to tell jokes and linke together the joke session and conclude it with a vote for the best joke and a summary.
This was a great success. It involved the audience. We announced earlier in the evening that there would be a free for all joke session and think of a joke. The jokes were funnier than expected and all new to me. The winner was chuffed.
Useful Websites
Toastmasters International Find a Club
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Public_speaking
https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=upSEBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=quick+quotations
lulu.com/shop/angela-lansbury/who-said-what-when/paperback/product-21713991
learncool.sg
Author
Author, Author! About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. (Not related to the actress.)
Author of twenty books including: Quick Quotations; Who Said What When.
See books and profiles on Lulu.com and Amazon, such as Wedding Speeches & Toasts. Also watch videos on YouTube.
See other posts on singers and statues and languages and destinations.
If you want to learn to speak the Queen's English, or Received Pronunciation. join me at my online toastmasters club, Braddell Heights Advanced. Wednesdays, 7-9 Singapore time which is seven hours ahead of London, England. I am also a member of Singapore Online.
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