Mike after peach of speech

IN GOOD VOICE: Mike Osborne, from Carterton, the Toastmasters regional speech winner, will be aiming to talk his way to a national title on Saturday.

Carterton Toastmaster Mike Osborne is headed for Christchurch in an attempt to gain a Toastmasters national title.

Mr Osborne got involved with Wairarapa Toastmasters about five years ago to challenge himself to speak publicly on a range of topics.

Four categories are involved in Toastmasters competitions; humorous speeches, table topics, international speeches and evaluation speeches.

Mr Osborne's area of expertise is evaluation speeches, which involves listening to someone else speaking and then relaying feedback of their speech to them in a speech of your own.

Mr Osborne has a background in IT and says the process of analysing and evaluating comes naturally to him.

He finds humorous speeches the most challenging speech, but feels the process of doing them has made him a more comfortable speaker on any topic.

The safe environment of toastmasters made this possible, he said.

"You can extend yourself and it doesn't matter if you bomb."

Mr Osborne won the Wellington/Wairarapa regional evaluation speech competition in Levin, which put him through to the national competition in Christchurch on Saturday.

He will compete against nine others.