public speaker

So you agree to do the after-dinner speech. It is flattering and seems innocent enough, especially if you sign up months in advance.You might even fantasise that this is the break into the lucrative after- dinner circuit.

Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Willson hosted the awards and the audience was treated to an after-dinner speech from Sky Blues legend Bobby Gould.

Prestatyn Vicar Clive Southerton is pictured in 1988 when he broke a world record by giving an after-dinner speech that lasted 52 hours 17 Cross Street, Rhuddlan, pictured here in January 1952, was actually the town's first Welsh chapel In May 1990 a Lancashire firm Vertical Access was employed to carry out a much-needed spruce up of the tower of St Mary's Church, Conwy Hawarden Methodist Church celebrated its centenary in March 1963.

Humphrys apparently made the controversial comments whilst giving an after-dinner speech in June.

His gaffe came during an after-dinner speech at a sheriff's retirement do in Falkirk.

Party leader Michael Howard said he was withdrawing the Conservative whip from the MP for Congleton, Cheshire, after she refused to apologise and withdraw her comments, understood to have been made during an after-dinner speech.

"I'd definitely have the writer Hunter S Thompson, because I'm obsessed with him and I think he'd give a pretty good drunken after-dinner speech. I'd have Philip Seymour Hoffman, because he's just an amazing actor, and I'd have to invite Iggy Pop as well - I'm a big fan of his.

The surviving quartet are practicing etiquette, elocution and deportment in order to give an after-dinner speech.

Perhaps this essay began as an after-dinner speech to prospective donors; how it ever made its way into this collection is baffling.

Former investment banker and columnist for The Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer, gave an after-dinner speech where he praised the North East business community for its resilience in troubling times.

The awards will be followed by a four-course meal, entertainment from a band and an after-dinner speech from the former England international turned Sky Sports pundit Matt Le Tissier.

He wouldn't get out of bed to make an after-dinner speech for the peanuts Paxo charges.

The highlight of the evening was the after-dinner speech by comedian Frank Carson who is himself an ex-serviceman.

I HAVE been wondering why is it that the Tory MP Ann Winterton, who was sacked but later reinstated by her then party leader, Michael Howard, for telling a joke during an after-dinner speech mocking the death of the 23 Chinese cocklers in Morecambe Bay, seems to know a thing or two about the eating habits of sharks.

Delivering a public or even after-dinner speech requires the inclusion - indeed, incorporation - of individual ingredients in the address, some of which did not appear to be apparent in the featured programmes.