Mistakes Speakers Make
When using humor in a speech the goal is to make the humor enhance the presentation and not detract. I recently saw a speaker trying too hard to be funny. He was injecting humor just for the sake of being funny and not trying to fit it to the subject. It was as if he wrote the jokes and then wrote the speech as an afterthought. Some of the humor was about people in the audience and I felt uncomfortable because it was embarrassing for those members in the audience to be singled out. This wasn’t a roast or a comedy club.
When a comedian singles out people in the audience it can be funny. Don Rickles has made a career of picking on the audience and to some even that can be offensive. But the difference is that people know there is a chance to be picked on when you go to see a comedian like Don Rickles perform. But when you are watching a speaker it can be shocking. I should say the speaker didn’t verbally attack audience members like Don Rickles, but still it was inappropriate.
The next mistake the speaker made was he killed the joke by laughing during the jokes setup. You knew he was trying to tell a joke. Most humor, not all but most humor, gets a laugh when the audience doesn’t know its coming. The surprise is what makes it funny. Will Ferell once said, “The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it’s a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.” By laughing at his own jokes the speaker wasn’t playing it straight.
Laughing while telling the joke also kills a laugh because the audience couldn’t understand the speaker. He spoke while laughing. The only thing worse than speaking while laughing, my mother would say, is speaking while your mouth is full. In order to be funny the audience has to hear the set-up line and the punch line. If they can’t you are not going to get a laugh. No matter how funny the joke is.
Make sure your humor is appropriate to the speech and the audience. Humor can make a dull, dry, boring speech interesting and even entertaining. Don’t joke about an audience member just for the sake of getting a laugh, especially if the joke might embarrass the person you are speaking about.
In one of my after-dinner speeches, I am not introduced as George Gilbert, but to the audience as “Dr. George Willoughby” a psychologist who recently wrote a book entitled, “How to Laugh at Your Neuroses.” This is intended to be a spoof of an after dinner speaker. Before I speak, I send out a questionnaire to the organization that I am speaking to. I try to find out as much about the organization as I can. I ask them about what might be sensitive so I know to stay away from those subjects. The last thing I want to talk about is something that is going to upset or offend the audience. I ask them to think about some funny things that have happened to them at their jobs that I might use in my presentation. I also ask for three names of people that I can contact to get more information. When I do joke about someone in the audience, I approach them before I speak and ask them if they would mind if I poked a little fun at them. I would never want to embarrass or shock that person because the audience will always side with one of their members and resent me.
When portraying “Doctor Willoughby” I stay in character, if I were to start to laugh at my jokes they would fail to get a laugh. I am supposed to be a renowned serious psychologist. Make sure you stay in character even if that character is you. Don’t try to be someone else. Lucille Ball probably said it best, “I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that’s good taste.”