The humorous speech analyzed – 3

Lester Staats won the 2008 District 64 Humorous Speech Contest with the following speech.
Unfortunately the sound quality of the recording is not optimal, making a few parts of the speech somewhat harder to follow, but there is enough left to laugh and learn.

Why is it good?
Why did it work?
What can we learn?
A few observations.

Story

The whole speech is a story. People love stories. Plus, for the speaker a story is a great starting point for a humorous speech. You take the story, preferably a personal story, and play with it, looking for the absurd. You end up with a story that – hopefully for Lester – is not quite personal anymore, but has changed from funny to hilarious. This process is not something you can do in one night. You have to mull over your speech day after day, and you’ll see that almost every day you think of something that could improve the speech.

It is important to notice that a humorous speech is not stand up comedy. In the latter the idea is to weave a string of jokes together. A speech though needs to have coherence. Spinning a story is one of the best ways to achieve this coherence. And if that means that there are parts that are not too funny of themselves, don’t worry. These parts are the set-up, the background for later brilliance. The stand-up comedian doesn’t have this luxury – if he doesn’t score enough laughs he is dead. Which makes it much harder to score the big laugh.

Self-deprecation

The number one rule in clean humour is: never make fun of a group you personally don’t belong to. John Kinde once said that he can make fun of Parkinson’s disease, only because he has it himself. I once heard a speech with a series of great jokes about stuttering. From a stutterer. Poke fun at you own group, your own shortcomings and mistakes, and you’re usually safe. Poke fun at other people, other people’s shortcomings and mistakes and you can be insulting.

And less fun. The audience tends to like people who don’t take themselves to serious, who can laugh at their own blunders and imperfections. And this is just what Lester does. He portraits himself as the drooling good-for-nothing type of husband who can’t even buy what’s on the shopping list. Despite this we like him, and feel for him. I only hope he discussed this with his wife, because there he seems to break the number one rule: he is portraying her as a virago.

Everyday observations, warped

This is a story about a man going shopping, buying the wrong goods, returning to the shop, and buying the wrong goods again. That’s all there is to it. How can that be funny? A very strong humor technique is to start with an everyday observation or action and to look at it through a magnifying lens. A distorting magnifying lens. Things we all take for granted, like an itemized list, suddenly become new and fresh and strange, larger than life.

If you are not sure how to look at everyday things and situations with such a fresh eye, take a look at young children. For them nothing is ordinary, nothing is routine. Adopt their mindset or simply use their remarks as a starting point.

Timing, timing, timing

If there is one thing you need to know to be able to pull of humor it is timing. Timing is everything. You may be tempted to rush to the punch line. Maybe because you have rehearsed your speech so often. Hold back, slow down, wait. Be prepared to pause longer than you think is comfortable. Keep your contact with the audience. You will see them anticipate. At the peak deliver your punchline.

This only works if you either know your material very well, or if you are speaking off the cuff. Anything in between and you will be thinking too hard about your lines to notice the reaction of the audience and get the timing exactly right.

Lester has learned his speech by heart. You can hear this at the few moments where he slips and then quickly regains. He knows his speech verbatim. Which means he can concentrate on the timing. And he does a great job. Have a look at the build-up around 4:40. Only body language for 7 seconds, and everybody knows where it is going. Still, everybody loves to see it go there.

And then after the punch line (4:55) he shows the other side of timing. Give the audience the time to get it, and then give them the time to laugh.

A Toastmaster contest speech should take between five and seven minutes. It is a good idea to try to keep your humorous speech under 6 minutes when rehearsing. This will allow you ample time to add pauses, to give the audience the time to laugh without having to rush to stay in time. And remember, the bigger the audience, the longer they laugh.

Body language

Just look at that body language. There are a few moments where he is merely flapping his arms, but most of the time, he is doing something. Peeling potatoes, shoving a list under his wife’s nose, poking, pushing, pointing. This gets a lot of laughs. He takes his time, finishes his motions and makes them confidently. There is a lot of humor potential in body language. Don’t forget to move! Explore what you can do to make your speech more fun.

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