The worst thing that can happen while speaking in public

A lot of people are utterly petrified of speaking in public, but if you’re prepared, then there’s actually very few things that can go wrong. If you just keep talking and make sure no one can heckle you, then its quite easy to finish saying what you have to say and get out of there with your dignity intact. You might leave the audience thinking you’re a bit rubbish, but who cares? You’re never going to see them again.

In my sixth form, we had weekly assemblies where our form tutor invited guest speakers to talk about various subjects that weren’t covered in class. Usually they were social topics that didn’t fit neatly into any subject. I remember we had one man come in who showed us an editorial from the Sun about the Israel/Palestine conflict where he highlighted the deliberate misinformation they used to reinforce their point. The lecture’s purpose was to show us how to recognise when you’re being lied to by a news source. (Well, the Sun is theoretically a news source).

No one listened, and afterwards, the conversation among my classmates was about how elitist this speaker was because that Sun editorial was ‘just someone’s opinion and everyone’s allowed an opinion’. This was in the days before everyone realised that giving lies equal status alongside the truth wasn’t ‘balance’. It was just stupid. Thinking back, I do admire that speaker for trying. He was pretty ahead of curve on the post-truth era.

My point is that the guy had delivered his lecture with confidence, and then he left and we never saw him again. Whether people talked shit about him afterwards wasn’t relevant because he’d gone in there, done what he needed to do, and then left.

We also had our local parliamentary candidates come in and give us talks, and our tutor made sure to give equal opportunities to all parties; we had the Labour candidate, the Lib-Dem, and of course our local conservative MP, Michael Green…sorry, Grant Shapps, I’m always forgetting what his name is. We had Grant come in twice. He told the same anecdote about the time he met the Queen each time. The same anecdote he’d told me when my A-level politics class had gone for a tour around the Houses of Parliament. I don’t know if this anecdote is true or not. It probably happened to a friend of his. Then again, its not that important. Its not like I want a committee to review the one funny anecdote he repeats ad nauseum. I’m not going to repeat it here because its nowhere near as interesting as Grant thinks it is.

Anyway, the worst thing I have ever seen happen to someone while speaking in public happened in 2008 during one of these assemblies.

A man from the DVLA had come in to talk to us about how to pass your driving test, something most of us were in the process of learning how to do. He showed us slides of road signs, made us guess what they meant, and he showed us a video from a hazard perception test and asked us to identify any hazards we could see; a lady crossing the road, someone parked up who was opening their door onto the road, stuff like that.

About halfway through the lecture, when I got bored and was looking at my watch and over to the door, I saw one of our teachers come in, looking distressed. He started making his way past the chairs and to the front of the room. He interrupted the speaker mid sentence.

“I just need to interrupt you there, sorry. I need to announce to you all that year 7 pupil, (name redacted), has died suddenly in the night. We’re closing the school this afternoon as a mark of respect.”

There was a moment of silence as this news sunk in.

Then, the teacher turned to the speaker and said the following words:

“Anyway, sorry about that. Please continue.”

And just like that, he left the room.

The speaker looked dismayed.

I couldn’t laugh, and I knew I shouldn’t laugh because someone died, but watching that man try desperately hard to restart the lecture after what had just happened was honestly one of the most surreally funny things I have ever seen in my life.

And d’you know what?

He managed it. He kept talking, and everyone was making sure to pay extra attention now. We found we wanted him to succeed and finish the lecture.

Everyone then filed out and went home for the day.

That may have been the worst thing I’ve seen happen to someone while speaking in public, but I suppose the one thing this man could take away from this incident is that everyone watching him felt sympathy for 1. the year 7 kid that died, but also 2. him, for being expected to finish his talk after that news had just sunk in. We were all thinking “go on mate! We know that’s the last thing you want to happen when you have to stand up in front of a hundred teenagers and give a lecture but you can do it! We believe in you!”

I don’t actually remember anything he said during this lecture, but he did walk away with my respect.