Funny Public Speaking Stories
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
Do you have a funny public speaking story? We’re looking for humorous, wacky, disastrous, or memorable moments in speeches, sales presentations, keynotes, speaking at meetings, toasts, and the like. Stories may be included on Public Speaking International’s web site or in a book on this topic from Cedar & Maitland Press. Please send your story to gary@pubspeak.com, and tell us if we have permission to credit the story to you by name. We’ll be revising this page regularly, so feel free to check back to read the current funniest stories!
The Current “Top 10” Funny Stories
#1 I got booked to do comedy at our local county fair, which I should have realized was not a good fit, given that I do somewhat cerebral humor about being a suburban working mom, and there were more tattoos and body piercing in the crowd than I knew existed in California! My stage shared bleachers with the pig races, but the stands were full, so I figured at least I’d have a good audience. However, right before I started, they announced that the mother of the pig race winner (Lindsay Lo-Ham) was in the livestock tent about to give birth. The stands immediately cleared out, and the only audience left besides my husband & teenage sons was a woman with several children. As it turns out, she wasn't there to watch me, but needed a place to nurse her baby, very openly. Needless to say, my sons weren't very interested in my show!
Lauren Mayer
#2 For nearly 10 years I served on the faculty of Daniel Webster University in Nashua, NH, as an adjunct instructor of public speaking. One of the early assignments in the course was for students to present a speech to demonstrate a skill or process using audio-visual aids. One enterprising student chose as his topic a demonstration of how to make fortune cookies. He gave out copies of the recipe, explained the steps, mixed the batter from pre-measured ingredients, and rolled out the dough. I was impressed with the advance planning and preparation that went into the speech, but never more so than when he passed out samples of cookies he had already baked in the dorm kitchen. The one I received contained the following fortune: “You are about to give a student an A on a speech.” He got his A! Maggie Rowe, Wheaton, IL
#3 I have presented my smoking cessation and weight loss seminars to just about a million people. There is one memorable night in Texarkana, TX that stands out. After about a half hour of lecture, I had a hundred or so people lie down on the floor for an eyes closed hypnosis session. I was about two minutes into the eyes closed portion of the presentation and the room was pin drop quiet. You could only hear the sound of my voice. I said something like the following: “And now you can allow yourself to relax, unwind and just let go.” Right after I said, “let go,” one man passed the loudest amount of gas that you could ever imagine. All I could see and hear was 100 bellies going up and down and the sound of stifled snorting. It took all of my skills to recapture the group's attention and get them refocused on what we were there for. No one in that room will ever forget that night.
John Morgan
#4 For 10 years I wrote job-search guides and thus did a lot of speaking. At one session, I had a man stand up unexpectedly, extend his entire arm at me and declare, “You are NO good. I have come to hear you three times and I still don't have a job.” I have since written other books, and I counsel small publishers and authors about their marketing communications. I always mention that they need to be prepared for the unexpected.
Linda Carlson
#5 Many years ago I traveled from DC to an eastern Long Island community hall to speak to an insurance industry group. There were several hundred people in attendance, and I was fairly young and nervous about the event. A few minutes into my presentation, I was interrupted by a loud bang. Then another. Then another... There was a bowling alley in the building! I quickly learned the rhythm of the bowling balls hitting the lanes, and I made it through the presentation with a few laughs. That roll-with-it attitude earned me more appreciation from the crowd than my speech probably would have on its own.
Maureen Wall Bentley, VP
#6 Here’s the story, all true! Junior Achievement is an educational program that provides a variety of different opportunities for businesspeople to teach young students about the business world. I taught a 6-week class (once a week) in a junior high school (Orlando, FL) for 7th grade students, and each week I spoke on an aspect of business, i.e., financial planning, marketing, etc. I tried to make every presentation very upbeat and fun, and I decided it would be interesting to take the students on a field trip to really SEE first-hand the complexity of a large business operation. A major hospital was near the school, and it was an ideal location for my purpose. Across the street from the hospital was a Wendy’s. I arranged the field trip for a weekday morning and the plan included lunch at Wendy’s at 11:30 am (the timing was to beat the crowd); all was coordinated perfectly.....The field trip day arrives. The school bus takes the students and chaperones to the hospital. We arrive and break into a few groups with individual tour guides, hospital workers presenting all the ins-and-outs. My group gets on an elevator. Along with my group, a hospital bed is wheeled in with a DEAD BODY in a body bag! Of course it was easy to tell what was in the bag. To try to break the tension, I calmly said to the students, “This is not usually the way a hospital visit ends. Most people leave well.” I could have DIED! So the hospital tour continues and concludes. All of the student groups reconvened in the dining area to re-board the bus. Well, we’re all sitting in the dining room and waiting and waiting and time is passing. I said to one of the hospital employees, “What are we waiting for? We need to get on the bus.” This is the answer: “Oh, you haven't been told? The hospital is surrounded by police. We're in a lock down. There's a guy running around the parking lot dodging cars threatening to commit suicide.” Now what am I suppose to tell the kids???? I already had to “defend” a dead body. I nonchalantly told the entire group there was a delay with the bus. Well, finally, the guy killed himself. Then we had to wait for the “clean-up crew”.....The bus was eventually allowed to drive up to a back exit, where everyone boarded the bus ... and the students never knew a thing about the suicide. We, of course, arrived at Wendy’s late, and the manager was none too pleased. But I explained what happened, and that was that.
Sheryl P. Kurland, Relationship/Marriage and Corporate Trainer
#7 I was giving a presentation at a BBB breakfast networking meeting when someone said that a car was rolling down the slope of the parking lot. They gave the license plate number: no one recognized it. It was several minutes into my presentation when someone gave a description of the car that I realized, to my horror, that it was mine. I dashed out into the parking lot to see that my car was very close to hitting another car. I got in and parked it correctly, making sure the parking brake was on securely, then went in to continue my presentation with a very red face and feeling very embarrassed. I made a few jokes about the episode, continued on and was very glad to have the whole thing over with.
Jennifer Ann Bowers, RM, LMT
#8 I was asked to present a 90-minute database programmer productivity session in many cities in Asia; starting in Singapore and ending in Taipei. All along the route, the conference promoters indicated there were no language translation issues or requirements; English and the programming languages of the products I was speaking about, dBase and Clipper would be enough. Throughout Asia the presentations went exceedingly well; the turnout was phenomenal and the venues and presentation technology was extremely advanced with multiple large projection screens and high-quality audio-visual systems. In addition, the quality and depth of questions demonstrated deep understanding of the technologies and mastery of the English language. When we arrived in Taipei, as was customary, I presented first. Also as customary, I started my session with a few questions to get to know the general knowledge and programmer demographics of the audience. It went something like this: “How many of you use Ashton-Tate’s dBASE?” (On asking the question, I raised my own hand.) The Taipei audience was almost unanimous in raising their own hands. I continued. “How many here use Nantucket’s Clipper compiler for dBASE development?” (Again, I raised my hand first.) And once again, nearly 100% of the attendees raised their hands. “How many of you use dBRIEF, the most productive editing system for dBASE programming?” Amazingly, nearly everyone in the audience raised his hand! Either I was staring at 700 copyright infringers who unabashedly proclaim their theft in public, or I was simply engaged in a monkey-see, monkey-do early morning exercise program for my right arm and 700 or so other arms. In a blink, I knew exactly what to ask next: “How many of you want to be a fire engine?” Fearfully, I watched as everyone’s hands went up. I might as well have been speaking to an alien society from Alpha Centauri-nearly 100% of the audience spoke Chinese, and only Chinese. It was very easy to see who in the auditorium spoke English, since they were the ones practically rolling on the floor laughing.
Bill French, Co-Founder MyST Technology
#9 I had one recently where I was to speak at the Ritz Carlton in Sarasota. When I checked into the hotel where the event planner had booked me, the hotel wouldn’t use the card used to book the room from the event planner. So I had to use my card to check in, which is fine because I knew they’d get it squared away with me. But I was speaking for free at this event and I really didn't care to potentially lose any money on the engagement. Not only did the hotel force me to use my card, they wouldn't give me the special rate originally booked because I didn’t have the “form.” So my room rate was three times what it should have been and for the amount of time I was staying there the bill was over a thousand dollars! When I pulled up to the Ritz, the man at the gate instructed me to let my truck be taken by the valet. I asked if they take credit cards and he said no. I asked about ATM’s nearby but he did not know. I think he could tell I “wasn’t from around there” and told me that there are very limited parking spaces the valet don’t use and that if I can find one of those I was free to take one. I got one. As I was getting my computer and other stuff out of my truck, I saw what my contact described as her car a few spaces away from where I was parking. She had done the same thing. And she was also just getting out of her car. I decided it would be better to meet her without my hands full of my speaking stuff. So I put everything back into the truck real fast, closed the door and went over to meet her. When I came back to the truck, I quickly found out that I had locked the doors. I reached for my keys and realized I had put them in my bag. I had locked myself out of the truck, and no spare key! My contact was very nice about my embarrassment as we went into the hotel. I asked the hotel manager if there was a local shop that could come to the site and get me back into the truck. He called someone the hotel had used before. It was about half an hour before I was to speak and the locksmith had just shown up. As soon as the doors were unlocked I was grabbing my stuff when the hotel manager came up and said he’d take care of the locksmith. “You focus on your speech, you’re probably nervous about it now, I’ll cover this.” I was very grateful. With only a few minutes before the event was to start, however, my Mac wouldn’t hook up to their projection system. I didn’t have any other cable to make that happen, and neither did the hotel. Again the hotel manager came through and called an IT person and they tried to help me. Nothing worked. So one of my contacts had a portable USB memory stick and I transferred the slides I was going to use to it and then we used the event’s computer. And to top that off one of the contacts had to manually hit “next” on her computer to change the slides. There was rain coming and the event planner asked me to cut the speech a bit short for the people to leave before it rained. I did, but not really on purpose. When I was speaking I had gone by memory and my memory failed. I blew through a half hour speech in about 10 minutes. When at the end I realized I left out a major part of my talk, I opened up the audience for some Q&A. At first there was no one willing to ask a question. I nudged them a bit and finally got them asking. Eventually the questions took on a life of their own and the event went over the time limit and ran late!
Gary Unger, Creative-at-large
#10 Several years back, I was asked to give a speech to a room full of budding women entrepreneurs. I arrived at the event with a terrific speech, looking quite stunning in my navy blue suit. Just before my speech began, as I was talking with the emcee who would introduce me, I looked down at my shoes to see that I had one blue and one black shoe on. At first, I was embarrassed––but then decided to put it in my speech. At the end of the speech, I reached down, took off my shoes and put them up on the podium for all to see. I reminded the listeners that every one of us is working hard to balance it all. Sometimes we get it all right, but we still don't manage to put on a matching pair of shoes! It was the greatest laugh I have ever gotten
Vicki Donlan
... And here’s one of my own: Some years ago, when I was the International Student Advisor in the Department of Communication at Emerson College, I taught a summer course entitled “Introduction to Graduate Studies.” Emerson’s campus is across the street from the lovely Boston Common. Kitty-corner to the park is a Starbucks, where I’d go before class to have a coffee and look over my notes. Since this was a summer course, the day was hot. With the front door being opened frequently, the interior of the Starbucks wasn’t very cool even with the air conditioning on. I had to keep mopping my forehead with napkins as I sat and prepared for my lecture. The lecture went fine. It was only in the men's room after the class, that I discovered I had a large piece of paper napkin stuck to my forehead! The international students-undoubtedly trained in their universities to be deferential to professors-had sat through my lecture without a wayward look or a snicker. Since then, I carry a small women’s compact in my pocket and always check it before “going on.”
Gary Genard, Founder and President |
