The Media Coach

Hi John,

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Although it is rather weird having wall to wall media coverage of the football World Cup, where every commentator complains about the sweltering temperatures.

Maybe London should put in a bid to hold the Winter Olympics in August, despite the lack of snow or any obvious mountains.

But that would be silly.

The big media story this week is the release of the Netflix documentary about Harry and Meghan.

We are promised some right royal revelations, though I suspect many people will simply see it as a follow-up to The Crown.

In fact, maybe that would have been a better idea...

If you're thinking of working with me as your speaking coach, there are just two left places on my programme for 2023.

If you'd like to speak at the highest level, get more gigs and earn higher fees, let's have a chat.

And yes I realise that times are tough for some people, so if you sign up before the end of the year, I will keep the price at this year's level - £275 a month for two one-hour one-to-one sessions plus advice by email and short chats in between.

My coaching programme

I'm re-running one of the most popular interviews this week.

Tristan Gooley is an author and natural navigator.

Tristan set up his natural navigation school in 2008 and is the author of award-winning and internationally bestselling books, including The Natural Navigator (2010) and The Secret world of Weather (2021), some of the world’s only books covering natural navigation.

He has spent decades hunting for clues and signs in nature, across the globe, and regularly gets called:

“The Sherlock Holmes of Nature”

I love talking to him.



Listen to our chat in the Media Coach Radio Show.

And there's a wonderful song from a guest from a few weeks back - Tom Cridland, featuring guitar from Elton John sideman Davey Johnstone.

The MediaMug this week is Dyson.

They are a company best known for the innovation they brought to vacuum cleaners, eliminating the need for disposable bags and ensuring maximum suction even as its cleaners fill up with dirt. Over the years, the company has been slowly branching out its product offerings, but mostly sticking to devices that move air, which is Dyson’s specialty.

Now they've launched a pair of headphones and guess what? They have an air filter attached so you can listen to music while looking like Darth Vader.

And no, it's not guaranteed to filter out the Covid virus, and the price tag is a staggering amount - close to one thousand dollars.

I suspect we won't be seeing too many of them on city streets next year.

Synecdoche is a very useful device when trying to bring life to your speeches.

It is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to signify the whole, or vice-versa. In fact, it’s derived from the Greek word synekdoche: “simultaneous meaning.” As a literary device, synecdoche allows for a smaller component of something to stand in for the larger whole.

Here are some examples - "The farm had one thousand head of cattle" or "She has green fingers" or "All hands on deck".

Synecdoche has been used frequently in literature. Christopher Marlowe, when writing about Helen of Troy, wrote

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"

He could have said

"Is this the woman for the sake of whose beauty the Greeks went to war and destroyed the city of Troy (ilium), resulting in the city being burnt down?"

But instead he used three synecdoches - Helen is a face. The Trojan wars are ships, and Troy is towers.

Try it yourself.

When you are being interviewed in a TV studio, it's important to avoid looking at the camera, but instead to keep your gaze on the interviewer.

However, if you are being interviewed "down the line", in a studio on your own, or if you are being interviewed from your home via Zoom, you must look at the camera lens for the whole time.

This is not easy to do, especially if there are distractions such as other people on screen.

Firstly, you need to know exactly where the camera is. In a studio, it's obvious, but on a computer it's not so prominent, but is usually top centre just above the screen.

Secondly, you need to think about talking through the camera, not to the camera.

So here's the technique that all TV presenters use. Think of one person that you enjoy talking to. It could be a partner, a parent or a friend. Imagine that you are speaking to them through the lens of the camera.

This will do three things:

Next time you meet a TV presenter, ask them "Who do you speak to?"

On social media, it's common to want to collect as many connections, or friends as possible. Alas, there is a downside to that strategy. You may end up seeing a lot of posts on your feed that are of no interest to you, or may be annoying, prompting you to post a response.

That's where things start to go wrong (and I speak from personal experience). A debate can get out of hand, taking up a lot of your time with no useful outcome. OK, you may feel better for having expressed your view, but it's unlikely that either of you will change your opinion.

I've noticed that a number of people are also approaching the Facebook limit of five thousand "friends", and are asking people to sever their connections to make room for others. That can get quite tricky too.

I've developed the habit of unfriending or disconnecting from people that I get into conflict with, or who are persistently trying to sell me something. I take action as soon as I sense that things are going wrong, and I have to say that I feel a lot better for it.

There's no need to feel guilty about unfriending people that you don't know anyway. You owe them nothing, and if they become a nuisance, it's best to act as quickly as possible, for the benefit of both of you.

There's no-one better at one-liners than Steven Wright.

If you're looking for a speaker, just get in touch.