The manager where I volunteer has asked me to do a speech at this event. The Leeds City Council CEO will be speaking in the same night. I'm wanting to do a cross between Charlie Chaplin great dictator speech and Pete Postlethwaite's Brassed Off speech. I should probably aim for something more original though. Any advice would be helpful!

Don't make it too long.

Plan it carefully.

Practise it, so that when you are under pressure auto-pilot can kick in.

Try to think of something amusing to stay at the start - people feel for you at that stage and so will laugh at more or less anything, to empathise. It will also get them listening and onside. Don't try to do a stand-up routine though - unless you are very witty.

I'd just say be yourself, it's you they've asked to speak not Charlie Chaplin or anyone else, and good luck with it.

Is this meant to be an after dinner type speech?
If so, it's supposed to be funny normally and related to the reason for the gathering, which you haven't told us about.

You could of course talk about something unconnected, or in an inappropriate manner, and make an @rse of yourself.
You'd probably do that anyway wouldn't you.

My advice would be to turn the offer down and leave it to someone who knows what they're doing.

Have you considered hitting yourself in the face with a brick?

That's already included and then he is going to mime pain, just like dear old Chaplin would have done.
And then the audience will mime laughter.

The key is to have faith in what you are saying. If you believe your words, your voice will resonate confidence.

When delivering it, make sure that you slow your own voice down. What seems like a manageable speed in your own head, will most likely be very fast to those listening. The adrenaline kicks in and your mouth starts spewing words and 100 mph.

If you can get it so that it sounds overly slow in your own head, you can garantee that it will sound perfectly normal to the audience.

What is the event Damo, how many will be there, are you representing the organisation and is it a serious event - would the organisation be at risk of losing funding if you made an arse of yourself ?

I'm guessing that they want you to speak of your own experience within the organisation and how its helped you get to where you are, in which case thats your speech written, stick to the brief, be brief but concise, give them your personal experience and not the company mission statement, the tip above about consciously slowing down is a good one, when you stand up to speak, pause, take a breath, smile at your audience, look confident and they will be put at ease, then start slowly...

Above all, write down what you are going to say, word for word not bullet points, write it all down, edit it, practice it, time it, edit in some pauses, be confident in the pauses, look around the room and speak to several random faces one-to-one, and remember, they don't hate you, they actually want to listen to your experiences and the council leader has probably just bored them to death so you could be the most interesting speaker they've heard all night.

And don't be afraid to just read straight from a sheet of paper, thats ok, you don't have to learn it off by heart, if you aren't that confident then just write it all down and read from the paper.

Don't try and be funny, it rarely works.

Unless you overdo it, then you'll sound like a 45 being played at 33.