Public speaking disasters- my worst ever introduction
The worst introduction I ever got was in Dublin, Ireland 2005. The National Sales manager of a global car firm wanted to introduce me to his 200 sales people, all sat expectantly at the start of their sales conference for the year. The crowd was hushed, the room was packed and Paddy got to his feet-
‘Right, now for the bull£$%^&. This here feller’s called- er who are ya? Oh yes, that’s right. He’s English, sorry about that. If he’s no F$%^&^&*&^$£$ good I won’t pay him so, err… John er that’s it…’
I was laughing so hard, that all I could do was say to the crowd, ‘Thanks Paddy, that’s the worst intro I’ve ever had, and I am English so for that I do apologise, but shall we start again?…’
At that point a huge guy, sat at the back, got up and said ‘ Jimmy, don’t worry about Paddy, we all think he’s a X$%^£ anyways, now what was it you wanted to say…’
And after we’d all laughed for about 10 minutes (except for Paddy who was steaming) we had a great time. I love the Irish.
And to prove it’s not just me, and to give Paddy a chance to get it right next time, here’s a great post from Max Atkinson’s website about the self same issue.
I’ve had some bad intros, in spite of my best efforts to help the introducer. (Who hasn’t?) The worst was probably when the person read another speaker’s intro, instead of mine. But your example is the worst I’ve heard. Congratulations?
Hi Chris, how funny! It leads me to a flight of fancy that you’d try to be the person that you were introduced as… And yes I’m very proud of this record, thank you. I wanted to punch him. But thought that wouldn’t endear me to the home crowd. But I think they’d have loved that. Regards. jim