Eric Fitzpatrick of Toastmasters International has the following ideas to help you to create and deliver a successful roast.

Picture the scenario. A long standing colleague is retiring and you’ve been asked to deliver the roast at their farewell party.

After you get over the initial shock, have exhausted every excuse unsuccessfully and can’t get out of it, what are you going to do? Where do you start?

Eric Fitzpatrick of Toastmasters International has the following ideas to help you to create and deliver a successful roast.

1) You need a willing guest of honour. The person must be agreeable to, and capable of, handling the verbal bashing they are going to receive. You must know that they will see the funny side of your material. If not – then avoid giving them a roasting at all.

2) Most, if not all, of the audience in attendance must know and like the guest of honour or the roast won’t be funny.

3) The material must be good natured.

So where do you get your material from?

1) Think of everything you know about the guest of honour, their family, friends, education, companies they have worked for, hobbies, places they have visited, outstanding achievements, personal characteristics and their view of life.

2) Select a minimum of ten ideas or stories that you could include in the roast and from them find the best three or four to use.

3) A typical roast runs for three to five minutes. You need to start with fifteen to twenty minutes of material from which to choose the best three to five minutes.

Remember the roast must be funny and needs jokes and anecdotes to achieve this. One way to do this is to find familiar jokes and tailor them specifically to the guest of honour. (For example, if the guest of honour was an Architect you might say, “I’ve often asked Tom what he would have done differently if he was building the city of Venice. His response .......... build it somewhere else”).

Stories about the guest of honour are a great source of material. What happens in real life is often funnier than a joke you write. The added benefit of a story about the guest of honour is that even if your audience doesn’t think it is funny, it still won’t look out of place in your speech because it was about the guest of honour.

Having chosen your material you must deliver it in a manner that enhances the jokes you are telling. The key to good delivery is practice. It also helps to record your rehearsal and ask your friends to listen to your rehearsal so that they can help make improvements.

Speak slowly and carefully. Don’t rush through the material. Maintain eye contact with all of your audience throughout not just with the guest of honour.

Use notes if you need to. (That said notes only. Do not write out your speech in full and read from it). The notes should contain only key phrases and sentences that act as a prompt to guide you through your speech.

Don’t be put off if your audience is not laughing exactly as you expect them to. Everybody laughs differently. If your material is strong enough and delivered well, people in your audience will enjoy it and show it in their own way.

If you want your roast to be a success then make sure it is well planned and practised, and is delivered as a good natured speech for a guest of honour who is willing and able to laugh at themselves. Then you will hit the mark every time.