As the Covid ‘freedom day’ arrived this week, first time Toatsmaster Paul decided Freedom would be a great theme for the evening.

We started with 3 very varied speeches. First up was Kim with a speech about learning a flamenco style dance in Spain, followed by a speech that married mindfulness, drumming and Toastmasters, 3 things that you wouldn’t think would work together, but did, and lastly Peter entertained us with a speech about his favourite pastime, hiking.

In the second half we had a fun time with imaginative Table Topic questions coming from our VPE committee member Karen Lee, and as we had a little time we stretched it to 8 Table Topics which meant that everyone in the meeting had spoken at some point in the evening.

Winners

Best Speaker Award - Kim Jackson

Best Table Topics Award - Geoff Hodge

Best Evaluator Award - Karen Lee Turner

Geoff was our Toastmaster for the evening, and the theme of ‘Sport’ was chosen by one of our newest members , Victoria, who was Table Topics Master for the night.

There were 3 speakers - our new committee member, Houra, long standing Toastmaster, John, and a visiting Toastmaster, Colette, who had ‘Zoomed’ over from Dublin for the night, and each one picked an interesting topic to speak about.

Winners

Best Speaker Award - Houra Amin

Joint Best Table Topics Award - Beatrice Freeman & Pam Rowley

Best Evaluator Award - Natalie Kay

Due to the hot weather, which was a Summer themed meeting, the evening was a more intimate affair. We had 2 great speakers - Geoff our soon to be Treasurer and one from visiting Toastmaster, Joy.

Geoff extolled the virtues of a relatively new punctuation mark - The Interrobang ‽ , and Joy shared easy tips & techniques for beginners on how to look & sound confident when giving a speech.

The rest of the night was filled with lots of Table Topics from Natalie, and there was no one in the meeting who didn’t speak at some point, which made voting on the winners much more fun.

Winners

Best Speaker Award - Joy K.

Best Table Topics Award - Victoria Cullen

Best Evaluator Award - Colette Ainscough

It was a sweltering summer night, and our 2 speakers, Houra and Joy, a visiting Toastie from Spa Speakers, were sizzling too. Houra one of our newest members, and soon to be our next Vice-President of Public Relations, started her first pathway with the traditional Icebreaker, but there was nothing traditional about her modern take on it, and Joy spoke about having grit and determination to succeed at anything you put your mind to.

Winners

Best Speaker - Houra Amin

Best Table Topics - Joseph Oldham (a visiting Toastie from Manchester Communicators)

Best Evaluator - Natalie Kay

Pam was our Toastmaster for a fun ‘Baddie’ themed evening, and we had a full stock of speakers talking about varied topics - Tyra spoke about World Economics - Money and Maths on steroids!, Kate’s speech had a short punchy title of Teach me! and we got a brief idea about what John was going to talk about when we heard his title - How Toastmasters helped David Hirst get his first England Cap!

Winners

Best Speaker - John Champion

Best Evaluator - Houra Amin

Best Table Topics - a first time visitor

Another great zoom meeting was had with a theme of 'Entertainment' run by Toastmaster Peter. We had a whopping 9 Table Topics speakers, some of whom were members and a number of guests. We had a full compliment of very varied prepared speeches from 3 different Pathways - Innovative Planning, Engaging Humour & Presentation Mastery.

The winners were:
Best Speaker Award - Joint winners - Tyra Till   & Geoff Hodge    
Best Evaluator Award - Susan H.    
Best Table Topics - Francis (guest)

First Timer Award - Lorna Stockwood    

Toastmaster Tim provided us a great theme of Culture for this evening, and Table Topics Master John brought us plenty of questions with a traditional feel.

We had 3 prepared speeches with very varoed subject matters. First up we had Karen Lee talking about female superheroes and the lack of merchandise representing them, next up we had Pam who used her slot to practice a forthcoming speech that she had to do as part of a charity grant proposal, and Paul had us all in fits of laughter whilst telling us about his trials and tribulations with lockdown home improvements, veg growing and a very naughty badger.

The winners were:
Best Speaker Award - Joint winners - Pam Rowley & Karen Lee Turner   
Best Evaluator Award - Susan H.    
Best Table Topics - guest

What a whopper!

Well this was a whopper of a meeting with 23 people attending. There were members, guests and visiting Toastmasters from various clubs as far away as South Africa. This all made for a fun evening with a theme of 'Books' which was expertly run by Toastmaster, Pam.

There were 3 speeches, 2 of which were Icebreakers (your first speech that introduces you to the club), from 3 different Pathways (the Toastmasters development programme) - Presentation Mastery, Storytelling & Leadership Development, so the night was pretty varied.

Winners

Icebreaker Ribbons - Lorna Stockwood &  Mano Manoharan

Best Table Topics - Ola (visting VPM from Manchester Communicators)

Best Speaker - Lorna Stockwood

Best Evaluator - Colm Copeland 

Our President Kate was the Toastmaster, and she picked a theme of 'You have been watching' for the evening, and was helped by Tim our Table Topics Master who gave us some interesting film & TV based topics to speak about, which culminated in Karen Lee spouting forth a potential new 10 part Netflix series 'Toastmasters in Love', with an ensemble cast starring the Didsbury Speakers motley crew.

There were 3 full speeches on diverse topics - The 3 Peaks Challenge, the harm a little yellow and black jacketed insect can do and the potential to incinerate the universe using the periodic table!! We don't do ordinary here.

The Winners

Best Speaker Award - Colm Copeland    
Best Table Topics Award - Joint winners - Lorna Stockwood & Karen Lee Turner        
Best Evaluator Award - Bryony Williams    

Tonight we held our club's first ever online Humorous & Table Topics competitions, and it mostly went off without any hitches, just a couple of times we lost a competitor of two in the breakout room, though all came good in the end.

Our winners, who head on to the next round, were:

Best Humorous Speech - Pam Rowley

Best Table Topic - Susan H