Good morning! It's Paul here.
I've just about recovered from a fantastic weekend - in particular, participating in the UK Investor Show. I (perhaps foolishly!) agreed to be interviewed by Tom Winnifrith, in a "live bearcast". We didn't get off to a good start, as I had a brainstorm, and turned up at the wrong venue - a North London conference centre. Only to realise, with complete horror, that there was a room full of people, and a very angry Tom Winnifrith, waiting for me at the QE Centre, a couple of miles south of my actual location!
Anyway, I hopped on the tube, and arrived in time to be torn to shreds by Tom. Although I did manage to get some quite good points in, during the brief gaps when Tom paused his monologues to draw breath! Anyway, it was all a bit of fun, and I popped over (well, spent the next 2 hours in) the Westminster Arms, and had all sorts of interesting conversations with various readers of my articles here.
Then it was back over to the QE2 Centre, to do a main stage stint. If you had told me, when I was in the depths of despair, from 2008-2012, that in 2017 I would be on the main stage, interviewing Nigel Wray, I would have laughed at the implausibility of such a suggestion. Yet that's what happened, and the initial stage fright immediately dissipated, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable half hour.
The trick is to prepare really thoroughly in the days beforehand, and practice exactly what you want to say, and how to say it. Also, I telephoned both Nigel Wray & Paul Mumford, and ran through all the questions with them, so had a good idea what they wanted to say.
So I think I've finally cracked how to do public speaking, which for most people (certainly including me) is something which seems very daunting. However, the only way to overcome those worries, is to tackle it head on, by getting up & doing it. That involves accepting that at first, you'll be pretty rubbish at it, but that hopefully each subsequent time is an improvement.
Fulham Shore (LON:FUL)
Share price: 19p
No. shares: 571.4m
Market cap: £108.6m
(at the time of writing, I hold a long position in this share)
Trading update - for the year…
