Lectern Club – Friday 11th October 2019
‘Licence to kill’ was the rather chilling theme of the first Lectern Club of the academic year, eagerly anticipated by members of the Sixth Form keen to hone their public speaking skills at the Master’s Lodge in return for the excellent company of a small number of invited guests, including Mr Gardiner, Dr Tomlinson, Mrs Tomlinson and Mr Fuller and a fine dining experience.
The Short Speech category was opened by Hector Lim with his speech ‘Our Plastic Environment – Killing in Plain Sight’ in which he passionately conveyed his abhorrence of the death of marine creatures due to plastic waste. Martin Easterbrook followed with a charming but serious examination of the issue of wrongful criminal accusation in his speech, ‘The Death Penalty and its Inevitable Mortality. It’s only human after all.’ Finally, Asyirah Kamal Hisham challenged the audience with ‘What If?’, her powerful and emotive look at the lack of the right to choose one’s own death.
The Long Speech category began with Johnny Harrison’s erudite and accomplished take on the internet’s ‘licence to kill’ privacy, commerce and our view of the world, entitled ‘ Interthreat’ while second-time speaker Timothy Tsirtsakis impressed the audience with his note-free oratory on the topic of ‘Deadly Powder’ – the tragedy involving Nestle’s supply of baby formula to African countries in the 1970s. The last speaker of the evening was another returning guest, Sophia Ho, who, in a vivid and charismatic speech entitled ‘An eye for an eye’, left the audience in no doubt about her passion and views on the issue of animal poaching.
After lengthy deliberation, the Master, Mrs Stevens, and guest judges Adrianna Sofia and Nannarelle Hundertmark all agreed that Martin and Sophia had earned the chocolate rewards and a place at the next Lectern Club, taking up the mantle themselves of guest judges.
We are very much looking forward to the next one.