Smash hit

The result was a nervy performance that lacked emotional impact. Which was a shame, because there was certainly emotion in there waiting to be drawn out. Brown’s revelation that he feared going blind in his other eye was delivered in much the same harsh tone as his attack on financial speculators, when it should have been quiet, personal and touching.

Things got off to a great start. In The Times yesterday I advised the PM to be bold and human: What could be better than an introduction by your wife? I also advised him to start with a bang. “Let’s come straight to the point,” he began.

Unfortunately, he followed with so many more points, with very little change of tone, pace or pitch, that it became a blur (he’ll no doubt be glad it didn’t become a Blair).

At times he appeared to be using the autocue, and he looked strong and confident. But many of his best lines were spoiled because he lost facial contact with the audience and insisted on looking down at his notes.

“It will be a British century.” Head down. “The power of Labour to change lives.” Head down. “I believe in Britain.” Head down.

It was vintage Gordon Brown, with key passages mangled through emphasis in the wrong places and a touch of the Prescotts with stumbles like “citizen-shep test.”

But the overall effect was solid and dull. Which might just be what his party needed.

Chris Roycroft-Davis is managing director of Can Do Communications and advises business leaders on presenting key messages. He is President of the London chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Dr Max Atkinson

Judging from his conference speech, Gordon Brown seems to have taken on board the three main points I recommended yesterday, and arguably gained from some of the benefits I had in mind.

The first was that he should stop trying to emulate the ‘unscripted’ walkabout style favoured by Messrs Cameron and Clegg and return to the lectern. By doing this, he looked much more comfortable than when he’s tried walking about: his gestures looked much more ‘natural’, he didn’t have to worry about what to do during bursts of applause and, perhaps most important of all, he came across as a confident and experienced elder statesman.

My second concern was that, in some of his previous speeches, his average pause rate was only once every 15 words - three times longer than in speeches by the likes of Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton and Blair, who used to pause, on average, every five words.

Not pausing often enough can cause two main problems. One is that it’s much easier for audiences to follow if they can take in short chunks at a time. Another is that even slight pauses can transform the meaning, emphasis and mood of the point being made.

On this occasion, Mr Brown made a startling improvement on some of his other efforts by matching, almost exactly, the one pause per five words of the famous leaders mentioned above.

The third thing that’s worried me about his speeches is his past tendency to pack in long lists of statistical information that doesn’t instantly mean very much to the average listener. On this, too, he did particularly well. He certainly had some big numbers, but there was a really nice sequence where he made them come to life with real life examples, such as: “That’s not just a number, that’s the dad who lives to walk his daughter up the aisle” – a contrastive technique that he used four or five times in quick succession.

And the contrast, in its various forms, triggers about a third of the applause in political speeches. Before Mr Brown’s speech, I'd said that if he could equal or exceed Mrs Thatcher’s achievement at the 1981 Conservative conference (when things weren't going too well for her either), at which she was applauded on average once every three sentences, he would be home and dry.

He came very close, with a rate of once every 3.5 sentences - so he might just be nearly there.

Dr Max Atkinson is a communications consultant and auther, whose latest book, Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy was published by Vermilion earlier this month.

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