Public Speaking
When my agent fled to Texas, he left the matter of his correspondence in the hands of a Hungarian of 1956 vintage who lived in the flat above him and with whom he had become friendly. . . So it came about that I began to receive telephone calls and letters from my ex-agent's friends and, after a while, an invitation to visit him.
At our first or second meeting, the Hungarian said, 'I will be your agent.' For years we had no written agreement whatsoever. . . my new agent told me that he had found himself with some money to spare and was thinking of putting on a play. . .How to fill the evenings had been decided but there were still the lunchtime opening hours to be occupied - if possible, profitably.
'I thought you could go on then,' he said.
Thus it was that, alone and totally unprepared, I tottered into the profession of public speaking.
I frequently found myself haranguing a multitude of three people. When after three weeks, the evening performances ceased, I asked if I might be spared further humiliation.
Although my stay at the King's Head could loosely be called a disaster, I learned a great deal from it. . .I discovered that, while uttering one sentence, it was necessary to have a clear idea of what the next one would be so that I could concentrate not on what was to come but on the sounds already in my mouth. I found that I needed to pay great attention to their pitch, their volume and even to the length of the silences between them.
To offset this old-fashioned element of slickness, I tried to roughen the edges of the show with various tricks. I marched straight out of the street on to the platform and paced up and down until given a sign that it was time to begin but, in spite of all these ruses, a certain staginess gradually seeped into the situation.
In real life I was moving stealthily towards respectability but, in theatrical terms, I was losing my innocence with alarming rapidity considering I was surprised to find myself on the stage at all.
At our first or second meeting, the Hungarian said, 'I will be your agent.' For years we had no written agreement whatsoever. . . my new agent told me that he had found himself with some money to spare and was thinking of putting on a play. . .How to fill the evenings had been decided but there were still the lunchtime opening hours to be occupied - if possible, profitably.
'I thought you could go on then,' he said.
Thus it was that, alone and totally unprepared, I tottered into the profession of public speaking.
I frequently found myself haranguing a multitude of three people. When after three weeks, the evening performances ceased, I asked if I might be spared further humiliation.
Although my stay at the King's Head could loosely be called a disaster, I learned a great deal from it. . .I discovered that, while uttering one sentence, it was necessary to have a clear idea of what the next one would be so that I could concentrate not on what was to come but on the sounds already in my mouth. I found that I needed to pay great attention to their pitch, their volume and even to the length of the silences between them.
To offset this old-fashioned element of slickness, I tried to roughen the edges of the show with various tricks. I marched straight out of the street on to the platform and paced up and down until given a sign that it was time to begin but, in spite of all these ruses, a certain staginess gradually seeped into the situation.
In real life I was moving stealthily towards respectability but, in theatrical terms, I was losing my innocence with alarming rapidity considering I was surprised to find myself on the stage at all.