Public Speaking Humor And How To Use Anecdotes

You can and should use a little public speaking humor and the occasional joke to lighten things for the audience but there are some tired old jokes best avoided:

“This is the second time today that I have risen from a warm seat with a piece of paper in my hands… let’s hope I don’t make as much of a mess this time”

Anecdotes and Public Speaking Humor

Unless your presentation is an information-heavy financial report or other totally factual speech, a few anecdotes (preferably personal ones) are highly effective in helping to illustrate the points you make. Especially in England where self-deprecation and extreme modesty are the required penances to be paid by the successful, audiences warm to speakers who tell stories against themselves. That's probably because your admission of being human brings you closer to them and therefore you seem more approachable and believable.

It's also because audiences are naturally voyeuristic and love to feel they're getting an inside glimpse of the real you. Whatever the reason, though, anecdotes work, as long as they're short, to the point, and totally relevant to your other material.

Humor is something to be approached with caution, although used wisely it works superbly well. There is a big difference between being witty and telling jokes, and unless you are a first-class raconteur you must avoid the latter in your speeches, even if they're for "after-dinner" or other social purposes.

If you're not a naturally "funny" person you won't suddenly transform yourself into one just because you're standing up in front of a group of people. If anything that tends to make you less, not more funny. So whatever happens don't be persuaded to tell a few jokes or using public speaking humor if that's something you would never dream of doing informally at a social gathering.

If you do feel comfortable telling jokes, then use them sparingly, as punctuation - unless you're to be "best man" at a wedding or the entertainment after a social dinner, wall-to-wall jokes are usually inappropriate. Jokes in a speech should always be tailored to the audience and material. Gag writing is a specialized writing technique and there are quite a few good books around on comedy writing, if you're interested in learning how to do it.

Over the years I have collected a database of thousands of jokes which I use to "switch" for clients' speeches, presentations, cabarets and business theatre. Basically what you do is take the hub or kernel of a joke and build up the surrounding story in line with your subject matter.

For example:

Original

The food in this hotel is disgusting. What could I do about it?You'd better bring it up at the New Guests' Welcome Meeting.

Adaptation

I was in the powder room after lunch and overheard two other ladies talking. Well, I thought the lunch today was absolutely delicious, but one of these women really didn't like that crab dish we had. The other one was horrified and said she should bring it up at the next management meeting.

Original

It's nice to be addressing a live audience today. Yesterday I gave a talk to a budget committee.

Adaptation

I must say I'm so pleased to be talking to a live audience today. Yesterday I presented my new business plan to the loans panel at XXXXXXX Bank.

Original

A little boy and his mother were walking through a cemetery one afternoon and the little boy stopped to look at the epitaph on a headstone. It said, "Here lies a good lawyer and an honest man." The little boy read it carefully then turned to his mother and said, "Mum, why did they bury two people in the same grave?

Adaptation

(Replace "good lawyer" with relevant adjective and occupation, e.g. "car salesman," "clever accountant," "loans officer," "financial director," "tech support consultant," or whatever.)

Another way you can adapt existing jokes for good use within in-company speeches, is to make them about your colleagues. There are very few organizations' workforces who won't get a huge laugh out of a light-hearted speech that pokes fun at their bosses and, given at the right time and in the right place, such a speech works wonders for in-company relationships.

I'm often called upon to write speeches like this, and sometimes I even create entire cabarets based on in-company jokes performed either by staff or by professional actors. Although I wouldn't recommend that you try to do a cabaret - that takes experience and knowledge of stagecraft and dramatization as well as joke writing - you can easily make a few jokes about other senior people in your organization.

A good place to find base material is within their hobbies, provided that the majority of the audience knows what their hobbies are. There are hundreds of jokes about golf, sailing, horse riding, skiing and nearly every other activity which you can adapt so it appears to be about the person concerned. Hobbies also offer the advantage of being distanced from the work persona of the "victim," which helps minimize embarrassment while still being funny.

Lastly, if you are to deliver an after-dinner or other speech that is purely for entertainment value rather than information content, you can create a storyline which is loosely based on fact, on which you hang various adapted or original jokes. That is how to use Public Speaking Humor.

An example of that is a speech I once wrote for my Dad, a retired newspaper publisher, when he had to talk about his career to his local Probus Club (for retired business people) after one of their monthly lunches. He loves telling jokes so I used his work as a newspaper editor as the storyline and included numerous gags in among the true anecdotes. The speech was a great success, if only because nobody fell asleep - their normal tally is about 50% of them already snoring by the time the speaker's been up for five minutes, and as my Dad's voice isn't very loud it had to be his material that kept them awake!

If you're looking for public speaking humor or jokes to adapt there are some good joke books available in bookstores (including one or two written by yours truly...) and of course you can find them online via the usual big sites - try keying in +JOKES+(YOUR SUBJECT). If you key the same thing into a search engine you'll also come across jokes archived on websites devoted to the subject concerned.

Legal Issues And Public Speaking Humor

Something you need to be mindful of its copyright and legally you may not have the right to use a joke as it appears in a book or on a website, because when you give the speech that could constitute public broadcast. Obviously I can't be more specific about this because the circumstances vary from country to country. If you're at all concerned about the copyright implications of using public speaking humor and jokes in your speeches you should ask your legal advisers for guidance.

Canadian-born Suzan St Maur is an international business writer and author based in the United Kingdom. In addition to her consultancy work for clients in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia, she contributes articles to more than 150 business websites and publications worldwide, and has written eleven published books. Her latest eBooks, "The MAMBA Way To Make Your Words Sell" and "Get Yourself Published" and available as PDF downloads from BookShaker.com

To subscribe to her free biweekly business writing tips eZine, TIPZ from SUZE, click here

© Suzan St Maur

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