A Talent to Amuse

A Talent to Amuse ©

By Michael Casey

A Talent to Amuse was the title of a book I read 20 or 30 years ago, it was written by Sheridan Morley and it was about Noel Coward. We were watching the Italian Job on TV when I thought about the book, one thing connects to another and then hey presto you have a memory reload. So today I’m going to talk about what amuses us, we have amusement arcades and they are supposed to amuse us, but they just take our money for nothing, which is a name of a song too, but that’s another memory connection.

We find in our house that our youngest daughter amuses us the most, why, because she is spontaneous and so inventive. I think she must have come out of the womb with a Blue Peter badge already in her hand. She can make things out of paper and old cardboard boxes, she was given a dolls house for her birthday by her aunty, so that inspired her to make more dolls houses out of shoe boxes. Your own daughters probably do the same, our daughter is a comedienne too, her Chinese grandfather was always very funny, so we believe she inherited from him. She was actually in the womb, in Shanghai,  listening to him before she was born, sadly he died 9 months after she was born. However such a talent to amuse must have come from somewhere, so we thank him.

Children mimic and exaggerate their parents’ and uncles’ and aunties’ mannerisms, this always makes families laugh. However come the teenage years it’s the parents who imitate the sulks, the  moans and the its not fairs as teenagers slam doors and go to their rooms. Thankfully our daughters have not reached that age and stage, for it is an act, so I have something to look forward too.

Back to amusing though, at the concierge desk 10 years ago I had a minute to deal with a guests query, to sort them out and to keep them happy. You can read a guest by their body language, the trick is to know if you can be quick or be slow, are they happy or are the hurried. By keeping the guests happy they will come back and the hotel will be successful, which in turn is good for you. It was a new build hotel, a 4 star, we actually opened the hotel as they say in the business. We were known as a happy hotel, Roger, Jim and me were  the 1^st point of contact so it was up to us to break the ice and give guests a good experience. We’d crack a joke as we greeted the guests, this is important, why, because nobody wants to come into a funeral parlour, people like to have a good feeling wherever they are. Our manager once went to another hotel and stood there to see how fast the front of house team were. Twenty minutes later he was approached and welcomed, at CPNEC when I was on duty it would be 20 seconds, I was Employee of The Year, very close runner up after all.

Back to amusing, it’s not hard to lift an atmosphere, how do you do it? Smile, just smile and you will feel happier yourself. Imitation works too, as well as mime, or even Irish dancing. I have a teacher friend who does a jig if the students are turning off, then once she’s got their attention she goes back to the lesson. Actually in Teacher Training they ask what kind of teacher you are, Lion tamer  or Entertainer, as well as other styles. When I’ve done Esol English teaching I’ve been an Entertainer to get them interested, then you go through the work, but you have to like a boat on the water and react to the wind so to speak. Mix and match to circumstances, some even said they’d never forget me, I just told them to forget me, but remember their English.

I did get excellent, excellent and exemplary on my external appraisal for teaching too.

Amusement does work as a tool, but you have to balance it out with knowledge. I wrote a play called Shoplife which was called “Sparkling, very real, great fun, hilarious, we could not stop reading it, we hope to produce it, not this season but next” it’s on Amazon Kindle  by the way. Now that’s an out and out comedy which I hope somebody will pick up some day when they cancel Trollied perhaps. 

 Now on a Laugh and Learn basis, you can teach customer service by getting staff to read the play. Shoplife is a comedy and the customer service in it is terrible, that’s why it’s so funny. So you break the play down and say what customer service disasters can you see, what health and safety rules have been broken. All very amusing, but, as a  teaching tool far better than a boring list. You could package it with a dvd and  health and safety material, and yes I’ve thought about this for years, so that people are amused and they learn. Then after that perhaps in reverse order the play  finally gets on stage. John Cleese did have a training company once, so I can follow in his footsteps.

A Talent to Amuse is a great book it may be in a library somewhere, so please go and read it. As for me I’m no Noel Coward, but I do hope that like him I do have a talent to amuse.