{"id":64,"date":"2007-03-29T07:59:48","date_gmt":"2007-03-29T06:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2007\/03\/29\/cheese-cheese-cheese-and-the-screamingly-obvious\/"},"modified":"2015-02-19T10:25:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T10:25:51","slug":"cheese-cheese-cheese-and-the-screamingly-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/cheese-cheese-cheese-and-the-screamingly-obvious\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheese, cheese, cheese…. and the screamingly obvious!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just spend a couple of minutes listening to one of those ‘fun’ articles on Radio Four’s Today programme<\/a> about a webcam which is showing a cheese. \u00a0The cheese isn’t doing anything except sitting there, maturing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, I know the intervewee wasn’t a professional (bless him!) but the questions weren’t exactly probing and nor did they take an unexpected turn. \u00a0You know the sort of thing: “When do you expect the cheese to be mature?”. \u00a0Unfortunately for the level of interest in the programme it appears that this was a\u00a0murderously hard\u00a0killer question – without the option to Phone a Friend, 50-50, or Ask the Audience.<\/p>\n

I felt like screaming at the radio: “For heaven’s sake, man! \u00a0Did it not occur to you that you were going to be asked that question before you came on air – in fact wasn’t it on your mind when you set up the webcam…. or even when you started being a cheesemaker!”.<\/p>\n

For him and for people like him, here’s a tip. \u00a0Improvised does not equal extemporised.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, just because you’re making it up as you go along, doesn’t mean you have to make it up from scratch<\/span> as you go along.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can think of the obvious questions, prepare the obvious answers.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can’t think of any obvious questions two things spring to mind
\nYou probably haven’t got an easy story and you might want to think of a different angle!; and
\nThere’s no reason you can’t pre-prepare ‘part answers’ and simply put them together on the fly.<\/p>\n

Anything…. anything to avoid the “Well, errr…. \u00a0I suppose sometime about…. err….. it depends.” \u00a0It make you sound like an idiot.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s easier said than done but easier once you’ve had some practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just spend a couple of minutes listening to one of those ‘fun’ articles on Radio Four’s Today programme about a webcam which is showing a cheese. \u00a0The cheese isn’t doing anything except sitting there, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3088,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/3088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}