Well, I gave a talk the other day at a destination many thousands of kilometers away from this newspaper. I was led onto a stage by an introducer with whom I had worked before.

He announced that instead of sharing the speaker’s CV with the audience, he was going to give them a flavor of who I was by reading something. He then produced from his pocket a copy of my long and bitter denunciation of moderators and read it out loud from beginning to end.

"So this is what he thinks of me," he told the audience. I was wandering whether his introduction would climax with me being arrested live on stage for libel. That would have been a first.

At least it was more exciting than an event I was at last week where the moderator read the speaker’s entire CV out loud. It seemed to contain everything from his mother’s maiden name to a recitation of his entire decoded DNA genome. Too much information. Unless of course, someone in the audience was planning to clone the speaker and send pirate copies on speaking tours (probably just the sort of thing which happens in Asia).

But no. If you have to introduce someone, take inspiration from newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, who sent a telegram to a reporter saying: "Send juicy details, never mind the facts."

Mind you, tread carefully. I know of one case where a speaker turned up at an event with a rather serious statement prepared for the person introducing him. The introducer scanned the written piece, decided it was too dull to read, and instead told the audience that they were going to wet themselves laughing at a speech from an amazingly funny guy.

Unfortunately the speaker had come to deliver a grim speech about a dead child.

As soon as he started to deliver his talk, the atmosphere in the room turned to ice. Audience, speaker and introducer all felt like jumping off high buildings, and may, indeed have done so.

The day before writing this column, I gave a speech at a conference in Singapore. The introducer caught me a few minutes before I was due to get up on stage. She said, "Would you like to read my introduction about you to make sure it is accurate?"

I scanned the piece and realized that it was several years old.

My ego, which is unfortunately so large that I have to enter rooms sideways in a half-stooped position, snapped into action. I said: "Your introduction says ‘He has sold more than 90,000 books’. That’s years out of date. It would be more accurate to say several hundred thousand books."

She duly scribbled the change onto the little card she was using.

Sixty seconds later, she was up on her feet in front of the crowd. "I am delighted to introduce our speaker to you," she said. "This man has sold several hundred books."

Serves me right.

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