So..what would YOU have done..?

This year, I was invited to provide the Christmas entertainment at a large networking event.   It was a lovely event and I was blessed to see smiling faces all around me.

Well..almost all around me.

Because there’s always an exception isn’t there?  Have you noticed that?  The whole room might be laughing their socks off, but there will be one person looking at you as though you’ve  just recovered something particularly nasty from the bottom of their wash bin. You can’t escape it.

A year ago, when I first started after dinner speaking, I performed at a ladies golf club.  They asked me for something a little risque.  Fine by me. Risque I can do!

I started my poetry/storytelling and all was going well.  Until my eyes alighted on three old ladies at the front.   Three very old ladies, wearing tweed suits and sour expressions.  Sitting just under my nose and glaring at me in utter disapproval.   Not a glimmer of a smile.  Nothing.

I continued.  The laughter rang round the room but my eyes inexplicably kept returning to the Three Tweeds.

As I came to each risque poem I mentally did a Risk Assessment and invariably discarded it…..so let’s just say my performance that evening lacked a little oomph.  To be more precise there were Big Chunks Missing.

Afterwards I mentioned it to the Chairwoman.  ”Yes I’m sorry about that” she said.  ”We really shouldn’t have put them there.   They hate entertainment.”

Classic!

You learn a lot with experience.  You learn to get a feel for the audience. You learn never to concentrate on someone who looks as though they are sitting on a pine cone.

But in my defence I firmly believe there were mitigating circumstances.  Ask yourself, with three elderly ladies glaring at you, could  you have recited a verse called  ‘I wish I had a willy’ ?

No. I thought not.