DON'T BE FRIGHTENED OF FEAR

Well, that’s easy to say but harder to do.

It was on Wednesday that I got really angry the Times for its smug insensitivity. They’d run a piece about “glossophobia” – that’s the fear of public speaking. As someone who helps people with this problem I feel sympathy with anyone who suffers from it.

So what made me cross was not the news piece on page 5 (of which more in a second) but the leader – yes they actual wrote a leader about it – which said it was not obvious why people should feel anxious about public speaking. Try talking to the 75% of people who do feel bad about it. Even Steven Spielberg said he thought it would be the next topic on which he’d do a frightening film.

I’ve worked with people who when confronted with the prospect of speaking to a hundred of their peers forget their own name. That’s an extreme version of drying up. Others feel ill. Others simply want the ground to swallow them up.

The Times leader writer doesn’t get that.

Nor did the Editor of the Times either seem to get that his leg was being playfully pulled. The piece on page 5 winningly headlined “Speaking in public ranks worse than death for most” had been derived from a dodgy piece of promotional research by OnePoll who describe themselves as “creative researchers” and to go a step further as the “pulse of the people”.

Creative research like creative accounting may need to be treated a little sceptically.

In their research fear of public speaking came ahead of being buried alive and death as something to be avoided.  Holes in doughnuts and woolly jumpers were regarded as pretty frightening too.  Women were more frightened of public speaking than men.  And dogs were absolutely incapable of doing it at all (I made that up.)

I want to consider this “pulse of the people” idea.

52% of people think cupcakes are a bit rude (squashy like well you know…) and breadsticks are hardly ever bought by men (penis envy). Ed Miliband is regarded as a sex symbol in Manchester (those eyes staring with unrequited passion) and research proves Pepsi makes you fart whilst Coca Cola doesn’t. And 90% of Times readers believe what they read.

This is not a hallucination: this is the pulse of the people.

But cutting through all this I strongly believe that teaching people to speak with confidence and with wit and charm is as important as teaching them to read.

But not as important as Britain’s most serious newspaper stopping behaving like a stand up comedian.