NEWSLETTER OF THE EUROPEAN SPEECHWRITER NETWORK · INCORPORATING THE UK SPEECHWRITERS’ GUILD

THE

SPEECHWRITER
FEBRUARY 2018 | VOLUME 20 europeanspeechwriters.org · ukspeechwritersguild.co.uk

Destination
Cambridge
Stephen Krupin talks to us about his
time in the Obama administration
1 BOOK REVIEW by Alan Barker
Do You Talk Funny?
Seven Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker
David Nihill, BenBella Books, 2016
W ell, I don’t know. For decades, I – and
a thousand trainers like me – have
warned presenters to avoid the Bermuda
Triangle of humour, made all the more
treacherous with international audiences
(see under ‘Foreigners, humour, lack of’).
And now, along comes David Nihill to
suggest that being funny isn’t just desirable,
but downright essential. Did he convince
me?
The first impression was not promising. He
begins by offering to refund the price of the
book, but only if I send him a video of my
miserably unfunny presentation. Seriously?
And then, in the very next paragraph, he
explains that 10% of the royalties of the
book go to a charity treating people with
extremely unfunny spinal injuries, thus
topping my incipient resentment with a hefty dollop of guilt.
And that’s before the introduction.
I did, however, grow to like him. Get past the hyperbolic
similes (easy laughs, these), and you’ll find that Nihill argues
convincingly. Humour lowers the audience’s defences,
making them more receptive to your message. Laughter
releases dopamine, which helps us process and remember
information. Apparently, even the number of hand gestures
a presenter makes directly correlates to a TED talk’s viewing
figures.
The book is packed with practical advice. That’s no tired
cliché: his ‘tipliography’ at the end summarises 80 top
tips from his main chapters, which works out at one every
other page. They’re all more the more impressive for being
hard won: Nihill taught himself on the stand-up circuit,
overcoming a fear of public speaking on the way.
That’s ethos.
He gathers his nuggets into a seven-part method. The first
section – “Start with a Story” – immediately demonstrates
the depth of his insight and the breadth of its application.
Not all stories, he says, need be funny; but “the more
entertaining you can be, the more time you earn from your
audience to be serious.” Marketing is no longer about the
stuff you make, but the stories you tell. The same goes for
advocacy or political campaigning. “People don’t buy what
you do,” he writes, “they buy why you do it.” The most
effective stories reveal something vulnerable, and relatable,
about the presenter themselves.
February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER
Nihill also realises that, to talk funny, we
need to write funny. Get the structure right.
Put the word the joke hinges on at the end of
the sentence. ‘K’ is a funny sound. So is ‘P’.
‘L’ and ‘M’ are not. (Compare ‘lingerie’ and
‘pants’.) Above all, ‘levity is brevity’. And
that means working hard at our script. To
his considerable credit, he never makes the
task seem easy.
Above all, he insists on the need to practise.
“Every chance you get to speak to somebody
… anybody … counts.” He understands
that every presentation is a performance,
and succeeds or fails by our ability to create
precisely rehearsed spontaneity. He almost
completely ignores what obsesses most
business presenters: ‘content’. He focuses,
over and over, on how to interact more
powerfully with the audience, and he demands that we
actually measure those interactions, in terms of laughs per
minute. He even offers a quantitative analysis of the five
funniest movies and the five most popular TED talks. He
quotes Steve Martin: “persistence is a great substitute for
talent.”
He is, in short, deadly serious.
He seems to recognise that his book risks falling between
two stools. On one sits the would-be stand-up star; on the
other, the actuary preparing a complex insurance strategy
for a corporate client. The first reader needs five minutes of
well sequenced entertainment; the second needs something
quite different. Every successful TED talk includes humour
and stories; but it also, crucially, includes a compelling idea.
Nihill doesn’t quite give us what we need to find it. (His story
about a man taking a vow of silence in a monastery does,
however, hint at the functional usefulness of a good joke. I
won’t repeat it; you’ll need to buy the book.)
In fact, I’d guess that Nihill’s readership falls into four
categories. 10% will carry it from club to club, squeezing
every last drop of usefulness from it until the book falls apart
in their hands. 30% will try and give up, daunted by the
need to persist, and 30% will read with interest but run away
in fear. But a final 30% of readers will take one look at the
cover, shudder, and turn back to their text-laden slide decks.
And that’s a pity, because it’s those presenters – the ones who
misunderstand the purpose of presenting, and continue, in
glass-clad towers the world over, to bore their audiences rigid
– who need this book the most.
Alan Barker
 CAMBRIDGE CONFERENCE 2

Yes we Cam!
Seven reasons to attend the 16th Speechwriters’ & Business Communicators’ Conference at
King’s College, Cambridge 11-13 April 2018

1. THE SPEAKERS

Unshackled from their speakers, speechwriters tend to

blossom. Since, in most cases, we have no status, power or
influence, we can focus on entertaining each other with our
war stories, insights and humour.

This spring we have a rabbi, a voice coach and an improv

artist, as well as speakers who can offer sensible advice from
the perspective of the White House, the PM’s office and the
European Commission.

2. THE WORKSHOPS

Martin Shovel recently described the conference as being like

going back to university, only all the lectures are brilliant.
Photo: Martin Pettitt

US Republican speechwriter, Lindsay Hayes, will be

explaining: How to sleep in your suit, know your sports teams delegates from Portugal, Poland, Germany, Belgium and
and not miss the motorcade. Dutch speechwriting trainer, the Netherlands - all the great centres of Renaissance
Renée Broekmeulen, will be teaching how to write speeches humanism.
that get a message across. And Martin Shovel and Martha
Leyton will be reprising their workshop, The Mystery 6. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
of the Metonym - How to write great speeches using the
speechwriting tool most of us have never heard of. Stuck behind a screen week in week out writing speeches?
In Cambridge you get to size up other speechwriters. It’s a
3. KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE humbling experience when the Dutch turn out to be more
eloquent in English than the British and the Americans. It’s
You get to stay in a room in King’s College Cambridge. You an inspiring experience to hear how others do overcome the
can swan round the quadrangle and have bacon and eggs for formidable obstacles that inhibit good speeches. Expand
breakfast on superannuated benches. Meanwhile channeling your vocational horizons and refresh your powers of
the spirits of great writers of the past, like John Maynard invention.
Keynes, E M Forster and Rupert Brooke, who all studied at
King’s. 6. YOU’LL FIND A COMMUNITY
You can also visit the chapel, from where the annual service
of lessons and carols is broadcast every Christmas. It’s our 16th conference. On
average 40% of our delegates
4. EVERYONE CAN SPEAK have been before. Many
delegates have attended
To get insights into speechwriting, you’ve got to get up and half-a-dozen conferences.
speak yourself from time to time. It helps to experience Someone once described
what your boss goes through. We run an informal speaking us as, ‘gregarious loners’.
contest. Nothing to worry about. You can’t start writing until We are an unusual breed
you have the brief on the Thursday afternoon. Which leads combining a creative
us on to the next feature… imagination with interests
in politics, literature and
5. A BANQUET language.

You get to have a three-course meal with wine in King’s For programme details and ticket information, visit:
College Dining Hall. It’s the sort of thing Renaissance
www.europeanspeechwriters.org
rhetoricians would have done - share fantastic food and
conversation in glorious surroundings. And we have

February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER

3 JAY HEINRICHS / FRED METCALF

The Smartest Soundbites

Jay Heinrichs’ book, How to Argue with a Cat comes out at the beginning of March. We pulled
out the best 10 soundbites from the text.

1 Cats and people alike frequently talk

nonsense. Both often behave illogically. 6 So here is the most useful tool to take
the anger out of a human argument:
But if you know a few tricks, you can switch to the future.
get along with even the most stubborn
and senseless cat or human.
7 Remember, persuasion starts with
agreeability. To get to an agreement,
2 An argument is not about domination.
It’s about getting another person to
at least one of you has to be
agreeable.
make a choice or take an action that
you want.
8 A distracted audience is much harder
to persuade. When you argue with
3 We need to learn from cats. Air your
disagreements with the aim of finding
your cat, you must entertain him.

solutions.
9 In persuasion, facts and statistics
aren’t terribly important to a cat.
4 When you find yourself in a
disagreement, set your target. Decide
Or to most people for that matter.
Instead, focus on what your audience
what your goal is - what you want to believes and expects.
aim at achieving.

5 The three greatest words in argument:

wait for it.
10 As every cat knows, a dignified
posture wins respect.

Jay Heinrichs will be running a speechwriting workshop in London on Tuesday 27 February 2018.
See our website to register.

Fred Metcalf
Memorial Trophy
Last year, Fred Metcalf, David Frost’s former speechwriter
died. Fred was a keen supporter of the UK Speechwriters’
Guild. He attended three conferences and regaled us with his
one-liners every time.

In his memory we’ve invested in a trophy which will be

awarded to the winner of our informal after-dinner speaking
contest in Cambridge in April.

FRED METCALF’S FAVOURITE ONE-LINERS

On how to become a good speaker: “Practise all the time.
One of the best ways is to put a bunch of marbles in your
mouth while you talk. Slowly but surely you take away
a marble. And then, when you’ve lost all your marbles,
you’re a public speaker.”
“The best way to stay awake in an after-dinner speech is
to give it.”
“Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every
month, other just go over them.”

“Good ladies, evening and gentlemen… I knew I should “Advice to speakers: if you don’t know what to talk about,
have practised this speech.” talk about three minutes.”

February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER

 READING TO CHILDREN 4

What can we learn about speechwriting

from reading to children?
T he Political Brain by Drew
Westen recommends that a
political narrative should have
a dog like me?” in Room on
the Broom, or “Swishy swashy,
Swishy swashy, Swishy swashy”
the simplicity of a children’s in We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
story. By day, I write speeches, The alliteration forces me to be
but at bedtime, I read to my more expressive and my son
three-year-old son. I’m often enjoys the dramatic impact of
struck by how the wisdom I the words.
apply in my work also applies
to messages scripted for Lesson: Sonorous phrases
toddlers. repay the hard work that it
takes to create them.
Reading to a child is like
making a speech. You have to RHYME
put some expression into it, to There are dozens of children’s
make it entertaining. It only books that use rhyming
works spoken aloud and it’s couplets or quatrains. Odd
obvious when your audience is Dog Out by Rob Biddulph is
bored. a good example. The rhythm
is something to maintain
CONNECTION the interest of dad, as well as
Whenever I read a story to my son, but if the action is dull,
son, he wants to be physically it doesn’t work. Good rhymes
connected to me. He insists combined with a strong story
on snuggling up before we give the narrative pace and
start. It’s the same when we shape.
watch a DVD on the sofa. If
Lesson: It’s probably a while
I start reading before he’s in “Reading to a child is like making a before corporate speeches can
position, he’ll fidget and not
pay attention. speech. You have to put some expression be delivered in a rap format.
into it, to make it entertaining. It only But why not have rhyming
Lesson: We have to put the political slogans? It proves
audience at ease before we even works spoken aloud and it’s obvious rhythm is as important as
start. when your audience is bored.” content in communication.
STRUCTURE THE RULE OF THREE
There’s an awful lot of shapeless stuff that my son brings Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Billy Goats Gruff,
home from the library. That’s why Julia Donaldson is The Three Little Pigs - stories with three characters can
outstanding. The Gruffalo is an ABC/CBA chiastic structure contain the thesis, antithesis, synthesis structure. The threes
with a twist in the middle leading to satisfying resolution. have stood the test of time.
All my favourites have a simple, signposted, cumulative
structure leading to a resolution. It’s a feature of Cockatoos Lesson: The best storytelling leans heavily on contrasting
by Quentin Blake and The Short-Sighted Giraffe by A H variations.
Benjamin.
COMBINATIONS
Lesson: A transparent framework to the narrative keeps the Julia Donaldson’s books make prolific use of transparent
audience interested. An obscure structure can be tedious for structures, alliteration, rhyme and the rule of three. She sells
the reader and the child. millions of books.
ALLITERATION Lesson: The bestselling children’s stories use structure,
What does my son remember from the stories I read? Lines alliteration, rhyme and the rule of three in combination.
like: “Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge?” in the The How many of these figures can we incorporate into our next
Three Billy Goats Gruff, or, “Is there room on the broom for speech?

February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER

5 BOOK REVIEW by Alan Barker
When they go low, we go high: speeches that shape the
world – and why we need them
Philip Collins, 4th Estate, 2017
P hilip Collins’ impressive new book
seems, by its cover, to promise just
another ‘speeches that shaped the world’
anthology. Thankfully, it’s much more
interesting: Collins uses his collection of
25 speeches to buttress a powerful, and
passionately argued, polemic.
Liberal democracy relies on vibrant public
speech. But our democracy is in poor shape.
“If we want to attend to the good health of
our democracy,” he writes, “…then we need
to attend to the integrity of the way we speak
about politics.”
The illness is disillusionment. A recent poll
suggests that 38 per cent of British people
are inclined to think that “democracy isn’t
always the best way to run a country.” This
might not be exactly the cynicism that Collins takes it to be;
at any rate, he suggests that it arises, in part, from liberal
democracy’s manifold successes. And those successes mean
that there’s less to fight for; all too often, political speech has
become dull. In fact, he suggests, “most political speeches
today are unnecessary.”
But democracy will always face new conflicts and threats.
“It is the nature of human beings to disagree. Politics is
the means by which that division is recognised, negotiated
and settled.” That’s why politics demands speech: “it is
in the spoken word that the defence of politics has to be
conducted.” A speech is a performative act: it enacts the very
process of politics. In this argument, rhetoric and politics
become virtually synonymous.
Disenchantment with politics fosters the illusion that there
is an alternative. The current contender is populism, which
Collins condemns but perhaps doesn’t quite pin down.
It has, he suggests, “the rhetoric of a movement but the
practice of a cult.” Because “it has no ideological content
beyond its resentment of an elite”, it requires a charismatic
leader to glue it together. If democracy – he quotes his hero
Camus – is the system for those who know that they don’t
know everything, the populist always claims to have all the
answers.
Democracy demands patience – “and patience,” he writes,
“is usually in short supply. Many distinguished people have
called for a short cut to utopia.” But, from Plato to Mao,
the politics of the shining path invariably leads to tyranny.
February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER
And tyranny silences, with catastrophic
consequences.
Collins develops his thesis into five claims.
Politics gives voice to the people, promotes
peace over war, speaks nations into being,
improves the condition of the people, and
tames the worst human instincts. “All of
these virtues,” he writes, “require poetic
political speech,” so he creates five main
sections, illustrated with a clutch of speeches
and bookended with essays elaborating his
argument.
These essays are the most engaging
parts of the book: so much so, in fact,
that they threaten to overshadow the
speeches themselves. Collins’ rhetorical
commentaries are insightful but sporadic; I
found myself making a separate collection of his aperçus.
“One of the puzzles of Hitler’s rhetoric,” he writes, “is how
someone whose thinking was so disordered, in every sense
of that term, could be so effective on the stage.” Rhetoric
itself, maybe, provides the solution: the order he craved
could be constructed only on the podium.
As Collins writes: “the novelty in his rhetoric was to create
a bound community, a Volksgemeinschaft, just by talking
it into life… This is the trick of the shaman. He has created
a need and a Weltanshauung and claimed it was what the
people thought all along.” Nothing very odd there: this
binding power is what makes any speech successful. Binding
is what rhetoric does. As Collins himself admits, “it is the
pinnacle of what every speaker would like to achieve; for
rhetoric to be true as soon as I say it, and because I say it.”
Political truth has to be talked into life. It’s never
transcendent; it always emerges from the clash of arguments.
And, because, as La Rochefoucauld said, “the passions
are the only orators that convince,” Collins argues that
democratic politics must rediscover “the principle of hope.”
That’s why rhetoric matters. We need a “better, more
enchanted politics.” The responsible democrat must describe
what has gone awry and find words to speak a better future
into existence. “The spectre of utopia is profound fear; its
promise is extraordinary hope. The purpose of politics is to
contain the fear so that the hope can thrive.”
Alan Barker
 STEPHEN KRUPIN
An Interview with Stephen Krupin
Stephen Krupin was a senior speechwriter in the Obama White House. He will be joining us to give an address at the
16th Speechwriters’ & Business Communicators’ Conference at King’s College, Cambridge 11-13 April 2018.
Tell us the story of that
photo of you with Obama…
This Pete Souza photo was taken on
October 20, 2016, not long before the
election, en route to Miami. President
Obama was about to give one last
full-throated defence of his signature
health care law and I had the privilege
of working with him on the speech. The
assignment was particularly meaningful
for me because I’d gotten my start as
a speechwriter working for the Senate
Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and had
written about no topic so often as the
Affordable Care Act while it took
Congress nearly a year to debate,
write, and pass it.
The evening before the
speech, the president called
me into the Oval Office
to review my draft. On a
separate sheet of paper, he
had thoughtfully outlined a
za
ou
detailed argument about how
eS
t
Pe
to:
the law has made people’s lives Pho
better — but how we can still improve
upon it if we can summon the good faith to do so. That
night I incorporated his edits into the existing draft and
the following morning collected his next round of hand-
written additions. Toward the end of the flight to Miami,
the president called me into the conference room aboard Air
Force One to discuss the final changes.
How many speechwriters worked with you at
the White House?
In addition to our colleagues on the Vice President’s
and First Lady’s speechwriting teams, the
presidential speechwriting team comprised a chief
speechwriter, three primarily domestic speechwriters, two
primarily foreign-policy speechwriters, a researcher and
an intern. That would add up to eight, but in truth there
were nine of us; President Obama was far and away the best
speechwriter on staff.
What’s your favourite Obama speech?
His speech on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in
Selma, Alabama, took my breath away. (I had no hand in its
writing.) America at its best is an imperfect country that is,
as Obama said that day, “not yet finished,” “strong enough to
be self-critical,” and a nation that we can “remake … to more
closely align with our highest ideals.” Delivered by our first
6
African-American president at the site
of the Civil Rights Movement’s defining
clash, it fulfilled the highest ideal of a
speech: one that can only be given by that
speaker at that place and moment in time.
It was a moving blend of history, present,
and future.
How did you discover you had a
talent for writing speeches?
As an undergraduate studying both
journalism and political science, I
was fortunate enough to enroll
in a speechwriting course. It struck me
as the perfect intersection of the interests
that had drawn me to those fields of
study: research, history, writing, editing,
storytelling, and advocacy. I don’t know
that I immediately had a talent for it, but I do know that I
immediately found it more fun than any other form of
writing I’d tried.
What’s your favourite book?
I’d always learned American history through a mix
of textbooks and trivia — broad themes punctuated
with interesting if random details. Then I read Joseph
Ellis’s Founding Brothers, which explores America’s early
days by examining the personal relationships between its
pivotal characters. Ellis connected history with humanity
through beautiful storytelling – an appealing perspective for
an aspiring political speechwriters.
Are you familiar with any speeches delivered
by European politicians?
I hear Pericles and Cicero were pretty good on a podium.
Vaclav Havel’s 1990 address to the U.S. Congress defined
democracy better than most members of that body have
articulated it. After having wrestled with the challenge of
solving Syria while serving at the State Department, I was
impressed by Hilary Benn’s 2015 powerful example of policy
and passion in a speech to the House of Commons.
What’s your tip to young aspiring
speechwriters?
First, writing is rewriting. First drafts and final drafts are
never the same, so give yourself permission to get it wrong.
Second, don’t wait for a speechwriting job or assignment to
build your portfolio. Create opportunities to practise your
long-form, persuasive writing, even if those drafts never
see the light of day. And third, never forget that writing for
the ear is a fundamentally different dialect than writing
for the eye.
February 2018 THE SPEECHWRITER
 WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN SPEECHWRITER NETWORK?

What is the European Speechwriter Network?

T he European Speechwriter Network, which includes
the UK Speechwriters’ Guild, is a group of professional
writers who enjoy sharing practical insights into the trade.
The function of language is
threefold: to communicate
thought, volition, and
We do this by meeting at two conferences each year (one emotion.
in the UK and one abroad) and at the occasional speaker
meeting. We also tweet, publish a bi-annual magazine and a Studying the liberal
regular e-newsletter. arts is an intransitive
activity; the effects of
We champion the study of rhetoric: the art of
studying these arts stays
communication. Rhetoric is a great European tradition.
within the individual
While our conferences are in English, we appreciate
and perfects the faculties of
that rhetoric is a feature of all languages. We like to find
the mind and spirit. The study
inspiration in unusual places. Sister Miriam Joseph was an
of liberal arts is like the blooming of a rose; it brings to
American nun and English professor 1898-1982. She wrote
fruition the possibilities of human nature. The utilitarian
a book called The Trivium, from which we can draw three
or servile arts enable one to be a servant - of another
useful quotations to guide us:
person, of the state, of a corporation, or of a business -
and to earn a living. The liberal arts, in contrast, teach
Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing
one how to live; they train the faculties and bring them to
symbols and combining them to express thought;
perfection; they enable a person to rise above his material
and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from
environment to live an intellectual, a rational, and
one mind to another, the adaptation of language to
therefore a free life in gaining truth.
circumstance.

Membership Options Sign up at europeanspeechwriters.org OR UKSPEECHWRITERSGUILD.CO.UK

eMembership Standard Membership Training & Mentoring

£19 / €25 inc VAT per annum
Keep in touch with what we’re
doing without committing
yourself to full membership.
• E-mail updates with details
of conferences and training
sessions
• Speechwriting checklist to
use to evaluate your speeches
• A copy of Eloquence - A
Treasury of Speechwriting
Advice
EUROPEAN
SPEECHWRITER
NETWORK
Copyright © 2018 European
Speechwriter Network. All rights
reserved.
THE SPEECHWRITER is edited
by Brian Jenner
Cover photo by Pete Souza
Design by Europa Studio
£19 / €25 inc VAT per annum
Standard membership is for
people who are already working
as writers.
• E-mail updates with details
of conferences and training
sessions
• A copy of Max Atkinson’s
book, Lend Me Your Ears
• A copy of Trade Secrets: Jokes,
stories and quotations for
desperate speechwriters
• Regular eight-page magazine
The Speechwriter, with tips,
quotations and tricks of the
trade for the professional
speechwriter. (Email us for
some sample copies)
• Discounts on training and
conferences
• Details of in-house jobs
• Speechwriting checklist to use
to evaluate your speeches
• A copy of Eloquence - A
Treasury of Speechwriting
Advice
Membership
£600/ €800 + VAT for one year
We will allocate you a trainer who will
evaluate five speechwriting assignments over
one year. These can either be speeches that you
do in the course of your work for an employer
or assignments to fulfil for yourself.
These speeches will be assessed in
writing by your trainer and you will get
recommendations on how you can improve.
You will also be entitled to a 30-minute phone
call after each of your assignments to discuss
your work.
• E-mail updates with details of conferences
and training sessions
• A copy of Max Atkinson’s book, Lend Me
Your Ears
• A copy of Trade Secrets: Jokes, stories and
quotations for desperate speechwriters
• Regular eight-page magazine The
Speechwriter, with tips, quotations and
tricks of the trade for the professional
speechwriter.
• Discounts on training and conferences
• Speechwriting checklist to use to evaluate
your speeches
• A copy of Eloquence - A Treasury of
Speechwriting Advice