The most pointless
speech ever given was an address to the board of GlamSinClean inc. by one of
their Regional Directors, Gerald Hompknee, in 1991. In his presentation of annual
figures, he started reading from a piece of homework by his 6 year-old son
Jimmy, who had put it in his father’s briefcase for him to read. Mister
Hompknee later admitted, “When I started reading from Jimmy’s ‘Why I’m not scared to sit on the toilet any
more’ essay, I thought I was in real trouble at first, but I managed to
turn it into a metaphor for management strategies, and it was actually very
well received. In fact, I’ve had Jimmy and his little sister Elaine contribute
to every speech I’ve done since.”
©2013 James Mathurin
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| Hompknee, appearing at a University of Exeter conference on "Serendipity and Chaos Theory in Public Speaking" in 1999, . Photograph by University of Exeter. |
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