Accustomed as I am: The Loneliness of the Long-distance Speaker

Basil Boothroyd takes the reader on a comic journey through an era when the likes of the Women's Institute and the Rotary Club were still the social hubs of the nation and needed a steady stream of guest speakers to keep their members entertained. "Accustomed As I Am" is an intimate portrait and sometime surreal travelogue of his own grim and terrifying experiences on the public speakers' circuit in the wilds of Little England. Addressing everyone from Park Lane black-tie shindigs for corporate clients to the inmates of Pentonville prison and the Edgware Young Women's Mizrachi Society, he is asked to entertain on every subject from the Life-Cycle of the Beaver (with slides) to Transport Through the Ages. While masquerading as a How-to-Book, Boothroyd wilfully loses us in a confusion of slapstick asides and self-effacing comic digressions as he unsuccessfully attempts to navigate the pitfalls of a thankless profession. It's a sordid tale of dingy hotels, bad transport, self-doubts, hecklers, drunks, technical difficulties, misjudged audiences and unsuitable material - instantly and painfully recognizable to anyone who has ever had to sit through a speech or make one themselves.