Brian goes international with humourous speech

Congratulations to Brian McLoughlin, who won the Division F competition on November 9 with his humourous speech and is now going on to represent both the Division and Mullingar Toastmasters at the District 71 Final, which encompasses Ireland and Northern England at the conference in May 2025 in Birmingham. We wish Brian the best of luck in the final.

Mullingar Toastmasters met on 14th of October 2024 and boasted a wealth of knowledge and entertainment, a feeling shared by all who attended. John Waldron, a seasoned Toastmaster guided the group expertly throughout the agenda. The word of the evening, masterminded by grammarian Anke von Bunau, was ‘shtum’ and it was a challenge to find a moment of silence on Thursday night.

First speaker of the evening, Philip Howlin, shared some lessons he learned from the book ‘The Courage to be Disliked’, accompanied by a presentation that allowed the audience to follow along. Philip concluded with a familiar sentiment to many: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference’.

The second speaker, Patsy Fagan, shared a history of the achievements of the great Joe Dolan. Patsy’s natural storytelling style made his speech a real celebration of the life of a local legend. Although factual and informative, Patsy’s speech was sprinkled with humour that engaged the audience throughout.

Tom Byrne, third speaker, delivered a speech accompanied by slides in relation to the Toastmasters online learning platform, Pathways, which has been overhauled in recent times. Tom combined that educational topic with the objective to manage ‘interrupters’, making his speech interactive.

The final speaker of the night, Pat Kenny, aimed to demonstrate his research abilities and fascinated the audience with a speech entitled ‘Who shot Michael Collins?’. With information sourced from various archives, Pat used dialogue in his speech to conjure drama and suspense throughout and had a portrait of Michael Collins and the potential suspect!

In the second half of the meeting, Jacqui Wiley shared a poem on bravery and finding courage. Deirdre Bigley had table topics to test the attendees with random ‘if’ questions.

Many thanks to those who took up roles in greeting attendees, timing the meeting, the grammarian, the general evaluator and those that took on the role of evaluating the speakers, and those who do the work in the background to organise each meeting.

An essential theme for our club this year is ‘grow, enjoy and celebrate’ and it is safe to say that the recent meeting ticked all of those boxes.

The next meeting is at 8pm on Thursday 28 November at the Greville Arms Hotel. If you would like to learn more about Mullingar Toastmasters and are thinking of attending, please contact the group by email at mullingartoastmasters@gmail.com or on Facebook.