What to Say When You're Dying on the Platform by Lilly Walters - Book Review

The first thing that struck me about this book is the 100 plus public speakers Lilly called upon for contributions. They are listed right in the front. What a lot of work! The contents are titled 'Table of Symptoms' so you can dip in when the mood takes you. Although, thinking it through, if the book is to be useful, other than for a quick chuckle, you will need to memorise lines you think could come in handy. Spontaneous people are simply better prepared. If you hope to use a line when you are 'Dying on the Platform' you had better practise it too.

Looking over the Table of Symptoms, my eye leapt on 'You forget your talk or freeze during your talk' This happened to me twice last week, in front of 200 people. Fortunately, I was speaking about speaking and got away with "does this ever happen to you?" Anyway, this prompted me to read 'What to Say When Your Dying on the Platform'. Have you ever bought a book and left it unread, gathering dust, until some event prompts you to pick it up, years later?
"I just wanted to pause a moment here, in case any of you have lost your place."

Turning to the section on freezing up I found stacks of good advice about how to avoid the situation in the first place. Then are plenty of one-liners. My favourite is "I just wanted to pause a moment here, in case any of you have lost your place." This came from 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Boardroom' by Michael Iapoce.

Dipping in again I turned to the section dealing with being upstaged. The symptom is 'The presentation before yours is so outstanding . . .' Like before I found good advice and a few one-liners but I heard my favourite from a different source, last week. So with apologies to Lilly, you might try saying, "I met (James) just after he arrived. He had been mugged and his speech stolen. I felt so upset by his predicament, I lent him mine. Good wasn't it."

But what if they don't laugh! That's covered in the book too, under the symptom 'Your joke or story bombs'. Like the rest of the book, you receive some preventative suggestions first, for instance if you keep your humour topical, you can pretend you never meant it to be funny. Here is my favourite one-liner from this section, 'OK... here's another one you may not care for.' from Ron Dentinger.

Book Review by Clive Miller