JBH Speech Competition 2023

The Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin (JBH) Speech Competition is one of the school’s longest running annual events with a history of almost 110 years. Described as “a night of rhetorical mayhem!” the competition pits five speakers against one another in their attempts to persuade the audience to their contentious point of view. The topics are deliberately chosen to encourage argument and address controversial issues, with many speakers over the years tackling significant social, political and economic issues.

Fortunately for the audience the warm up act for the 2023 competition was designed to gently introduce them to the art of heckling – itself a far from gentle act! The position that coffee was better than tea posited by Tim (Upper Sixth, a 2022 JBH participant, drew loud and opinionated reactions from the audience and provided an excellent opportunity to get the heckles going.

The five speeches this year covered a broad range topics: Care homes should be abolished by Alex, Music glorifying gang culture should be criminalised from Finlay, Competitive sport should not be categorised by gender by Harriet, Marriage should be abolished by Rio and Britain should introduce a parenting licence from Millie, last year’s winner. The five were provided with a public speaking training session by professional public speaking coach and Old Leightonian, Tim Spratt, shortly before the event which bolstered their confidence and offered practical tips on an individual level. Beyond that the five were left to create their own speeches entirely independently.

As a judge on the evening, Tim commented, “I really appreciated being asked to judge – it took me back to some old memories but, as ever, and as I said, LP produced five individuals. Young people who were prepared to take a view and seek to articulate it in public and in front of a live audience – as opposed to the ease of hiding behind a social media ‘wall’. “

The other judges included Will Earle A’Hern, a former JBH participant himself, and Charles Debattista, who actually won the competition himself in the early 1970s. Each provided excellent and constructive feedback on the individual speeches as well as some generic pointers which the audience also benefitted from.

Rio was the successful winner of JBH 2023 with a speech that combined structure, simplicity of message and repetition in delivery executed with passion and aplomb. She handled the hecklers well, managing to control the audience with hand gestures and was complimented on her smile, effective in getting hostile hecklers to like her!

Rio was delighted by her victory: “It’s kind of insane. I didn’t think I would win and now that I’ve done it, it doesn’t feel real! I’m really happy but I’m not processing it! It makes me want to continue doing public speaking in the future, maybe not for a career choice of mine but continuing it as a hobby would be really good. I was terrified in the hour before but as soon as I got up there it was fine. The first few seconds were really tough, then you got into the flow of things, then the heckling started and I thought ‘Oh my Lord!’ but then you got into the flow of it again. By the end of it I was really, really proud of myself that I had done it.”

Alex also enjoyed himself, speaking at the interval he said “When the heckles started coming in it was electric; I felt like I came alive! I had no idea how much I was going to enjoy it! And when the bell rang when the heckling ended I was actively disappointed. I would absolutely endorse this for anyone. It’s just so fun, it’s so rigorous, it’s amazing!

Finlay and Harriet who came second and third respectively agreed that it was much less nerve wrecking actually being on the stage than anticipating the event. “I’ll definitely be back next year to do it again!” grinned Finlay!

English teacher and audience member, Merion Taynton, reflected, “It was wonderful. A unique Leighton Park tradition for over 100 years. Our students showed great courage and fortitude putting themselves through that. Well done to all five of them: they make themselves and our school proud.”