I must have had a latent interest in public speaking and communication because I’ve studied politics since I was old enough to read a newspaper. I remember watching speeches of Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy as a youngster on Encarta on my PC (probably while everyone else was out being a normal 6 or 7 year old!).
I remember doing readings at school masses and giving a couple of short presentations at school that passed without major incident. On some level I must have actually enjoyed them, and I was usually asked to continue doing them. But it wasn’t until I entered the working world where I faced the dread of a team meeting and “the creep” of waiting your turn to update the rest of the team of what you had on that week. At a time I was feeling particularly useless I remember giving a very poor, informal talk to colleagues. Some point after this I must have had a ‘fuck this’ moment where I decided things were going to change.