Sacrificial Speaker: Matty Ryan competed in the 2015 GOTG and gave one of the most memorable speeches I've heard in the entire five seasons - What's the difference between a duck... [Yep - it stops there - no more text...]
Although pipped at the post for a place in the 2015 final, he's graciously agreed to be our sacrificial speaker - just to give the judges some practice :-)
Although pipped at the post for a place in the 2015 final, he's graciously agreed to be our sacrificial speaker - just to give the judges some practice :-)
2015 Winner: Jennifer Walker is a British/Hungarian living in Budapest since August 2013 (although it's kind of a cheat cause she also grew up in Hungary). She's an ex-nuclear physicist who writes fiction, dabbles in burlesque dancing, travels of offbeat places and chases surrealist art and art nouveau architecture.Jennifer's impromptu speech that sealed her place in the Final of the Finalists was an inspired answer to the question: Why I'd want to be a spider.
2014 Winner: Viktor Morandini has an MSc in geography and works with something completely different... for an American plastics company. He is more or less pure Hungarian, despite the fancy Italian sounding name. He has a love of strange and/or dangerous sports such as orienteering, krav maga, kettlebell and urban cycling will probably feature in his GOTG appearance. Viktor competed in 2013 and in 2014 and secured his place in the Final of the Finalists with an inspired prepared speech on the perks of being dumped.
2013 Winner: Hans Peterson came to Budapest for a one-month stop-over to somewhere else almost 18 years ago and still hasn’t managed to get to wherever that was supposed to be. He was raised in LA, escaped from Minnesota, and studied in Salzburg. His many talents include film-making, acting, voice-over work, great friends, and the beautiful scenery of this amazing city are mostly what have kept him on this side of the fine line dividing the sane from the rest of us. Hans's coup de grace was his prepared speech in the 2013 final in which he regaled us with stories of his mum's internet dating life.
2012 Winner: Although both Patrick McMenamin's parents are Irish, the co-owner of Budapest's most popular Scottish bar, The Caledonia, is a true Scotsman and the first Scot to brave the GOTG stage. This inimitable Scotsman has gabbed in all sorts of places - Murrayfield Stadium, the Cardiff Arena, and the European Parliament amongst them. The only one of our finalists to have experienced the dreaded tie-break, Patrick secured his place in the Final of the Finalists with his account of what women want.
2010 Winner: Rupert Slade won the first ever Gift of the Gab, before we had a website or anything nearly as fancy (not that this is a work of art). So much has happened since 2010 that it would take more than a paragraph to sum him up. Always ahead of his time, his prepared speech to qualify for the 2010 final was composed of song titles - which he sang!
