Etsy

Monday 25 March 2013

The most pointless speech



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.”
Hompknee, appearing at a University of Exeter conference on "Serendipity and Chaos Theory in Public Speaking" in 1999, . Photograph by University of Exeter.
 ©2013 James Mathurin