It was another intellectually thrilling evening on Wednesday 20th March at the annual Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin (JBH) Speech Competition. This popular event fronted six speakers presenting their thoughts on controversial self-selected topics to an enthusiastic crowd of animated hecklers. The speakers must introduce their subject for three minutes, withstand eight minutes of heckling and then gather their thoughts together to provide a succinct summation It’s argumentative, informative and entraining and the LP community loves it!
Our participants impressed the judges and the assembled audience with the breadth and depth of their research, their calm, cool demeanours and their intelligent responses to the questions lobbed from the crowd. Two-time JBH veteran, Millie (Upper Sixth), and Head of English and JBH Custodian, Matt Taylor, provided a warm up act enabling the crowd to practice their heckling prior to the first speak of the night.
Our esteemed judges were former LP English teacher and now Deputy Head of Sixth Form at Reddam House, Nicola Phillips; former JBH Winner, English teacher and Educational Psychologist, Anna Burnett (nee Baxter): Nic Bayley, former LP Head of English and custodian of the JBH Speech Competition, and Professor Jane Setter from the University of Reading.
Kemianna, who was awarded first place by the judges, for her talk ‘The UK Should Adhere to Open Immigration’ commented, “I was quite nervous but also really excited, I was running off pure adrenaline but now I’ve done it I actually feel amazing I definitely want to do it next year. I was quite scared for the heckling but it’s really interesting to see what other people have to say so I quite enjoyed it actually!”
Leander whose ‘Stop Smiling’ speech earned her third place after Kimia’s ‘Abolish the Right to Practise Faith’, reflected “It was terrifying but it gets better when you are on the stage, when you’ve actually started speaking. The heckling’s interesting but it’s fun. It’s interesting to hear what people’s arguments and come up with answers. It improves your confidence so much and it makes you think really critically.
Head, Matthew Judd, enthused, “What an amazing standard! All gave us tremendous intellectual stimulation and great knock back from the audience. Just a thrilling academic evening with people thinking about really controversial topics; I loved it!
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