Observational humor case study 1

2012-11-03

My Toastmasters Club, Powerhouse Pros, has a section of the meeting called Observational Humor. It is a chance to tell jokes about your observations throughout the meeting. I will give you the setup of the jokes and my monologue. Keep in mind that these jokes are meant to be funny and custom-tailored to the audience.

The set up

  • One speaker, Bobby, quoted someone who said that you only need to do humor in public speaking if you want to get paid.
  • Bobby also said you need to love your audience as a speaker
  • In Bobby’s introduction he said that his Toastmaster Contest Trophies were “closeted”
  • Our president and Toastmaster Emily provided a pop quiz as part of her theme about Multitasking

The monologue

  1. Opener: My mentor Bobby Williams says you only need to do observational humor if you want to get paid — a probably true statement paralleling a memorable quote from his speech, got good laughs
  2. I…. Just… Sorry [I am fake crying here]… I love you guys so much — callback to Bobby saying we need to love our audiences
  3. I also prepared a pop quiz for tonight’s meeting
    1. True or false: Men are funnier than women
    1. True or false: Humor can improve with practice. (That wasn’t funny, it was just a listening comprehension test
    1. Performing two or more jokes at the same time can cause fatal results.
  7. — The quiz used similar structure to the quiz questions that all of the participants took.