The Speaker - a great new series about Public Speaking on BBC

Just like buses, you do not see one for ages and then three come together. Following on from Sundays BBC series, The Lost Art of Oratory. Another series has started “The Speaker” – a series to choose Britain’s best speaker. 160 were selected for regional heats and the series starts by selecting the 20 finalists, five from each region.

They were being chosen by Jo Brand an established comedian. John Amaechi an ex Basketball player and now a motivational speaker. The final judge was Jeremy Stockwell who is an actor and director.

The fourteen to eighteen year olds only had one minute to impress the judges. They used a wide range of public speaking topics.

Stacy, was the first, fifteen years old, she talked about thanking her grandmother who brought her up, rather than allow her to go into care. She used the magic power of three when she said “I thank, I thank, I thank”, to finish. Not exactly tricolon, but still a powerful and appropriate way to finish her talk.

Speakers need to surprise, one of them certainly did, with his  love of graffiti. He spoke about his passion in a rthymic poetic way, slang poetry. It shocked, because it was so different. On questioning he, like a number of them talked about his passion for “words”.

His talk raised the question by the judging panel, whether there were rules for public speaking. So difficult to compare him to those who talked in a more classical way. Like comparing apples and bananas.

After such a good talk there was the poor 15 year old who struggled with his nerves and blocked twice, though on the third go, he did manage to finish it. The judge even asked about the stumble, he responded by saying – he was thinking of the audience, a common problem.

Some of the talks were personal such as a girl talking about MS. Which her mother has had 15 years. She showed a lot of pride and passion. One of the judges posed the question to her, that is valid for all in preparing for a talk, what do you want the audience to feel.

One girl talked about teenage love – “friendship set on fire”, it was eloquent, but she was criticised for a flat ending. Something for us all to remember.

The slow tiny steps forward of one contestant to build the tension, gave a good delivery, will we see him as a future politician?

One of the common factors of those that had got to this stage was that they all had the desire to win.

Very highly recommended for all, even those above 18 years old. I will be watching it for the rest of the series. This first one showed that they will cover a wide range of public speaking topics.

This is the start of the journey for them. They have a dream.