As a professional speaker I have two roles. As an after-dinner speaker my sole purpose is to entertain the audience. As a keynote, motivational presenter I become a serious speaker seeking to help my audience remember important messages by using humour as a powerful tool. I have learnt from experience that even the most focussed of audiences have an attention span of less than seven minutes. By injecting humour into my talks I help my audience stay alert and absorb important material.

Laughter is the best medicine. Unless of course you are asthmatic when inhaled steroids are likely to come highest on your list. Which is why I am so popular with healthcare professionals. As the saying goes ‘Physician heal thy self’ this is exactly what I am helping to facilitate when I make my medical audiences laugh.

Laughter is a physiological response to a trigger I activate in the audience. Members of the medical profession are no different to anyone else. They regularly feel anxiety, stress and even anger. By making them laugh I pull on a laughter trigger that releases endorphins, which in turn, counteracts the unpleasantness they may be feeling at that moment in time. Furthermore, happy people feel good to be around. Patients can feel so much better simply by being around healthcare professionals who appear happy. Everyone hates a ‘doctor death’.

Laughter in the workplace is important too for the boosting of staff morale and for the increase in productivity that usually follows. A happy staff is a productive staff.

During the talks I give around the world I often use examples of humorous real-life examples from my own family relationships to illustrate the principles of human awareness. Looking at an audience I can usually tell those going through a difficult relationship. They are the miserable individuals who work so hard trying not to even smile when those around them are struggling to stem a flow of uncontrollable laughter.

I am in no doubt that laughter is the key to a happy marriage. If you are able to laughing at each other, it shows you are able to affectionately tease and play – something so important in all human relationships. I always work on the principle ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. Or was it Bob Dylan?

A happy marriage takes effort. I have been happily married for 34 years. We keep our relationship fresh by each and every week, without fail, treating ourselves to a meal in a top restaurant with a good quality bottle of our favourite wine. She goes out each Tuesday and I each Thursday evening.

To conclude humour is a fundamental basic in the art of effective public speaking. It can make the difference between a great talk with an enthusiastic audience and a disastrous monotonous monologue.

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