GOTG 2013 - Grand Final

GOTG 2013 Winner - Hans Peterson

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 extended post-graduate holiday in Budapest has forced him to teach English, manage a restaurant, try journalism, and often sell his soul to the corporate and political elite of Hungary - always with a smile.  On the bright side, 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. He made his GOTG debut last season and is back again on stage this year to try his luck once more

Grand Final Speakers - March 2013

Nourddine Hajhouj hails from Morocco and has been in Hungary for almost four years. he is a financial  auditor and trainer in one of the biggest multinationals in Budapest. It's not numbers though, but acting, that claims his passion; he's no stranger to the stage having performed in many plays (drama, comedy...). Nourddine started speaking in public when he was 9 years old and hasn't stopped. Perhaps the Gift of the Gab is just the stage he's been looking for.

Zoran Spisljak, affectionately known by friends and family as the 'Beast from the East' or 'Big Z' was born in Serbia and was later adopted by the Welsh. He has been in Hungary for the last 4 and a half years, working as football coach with Debrecen and Ujpest FC. Between jobs at the moment he spends his hours analysing every single football match on TV (and I mean every one!), exploring the bars and restaurants of Budapest, taking part in his wife’s Zumba classes and when he can, bossing the Celtic Old Boys around from the back four!  Always up for a challenge and a lover of monologues, and being made all the braver by a few glasses of wine, he agreed to take part in the Gift of the Gab, and if you don’t like his stories, just remember it’s for charity!

Viktoria Vegh is a lawyer who has been serving the public for almost ten years. She has lived in Hungary all her life save one year that she spent in Ireland. This experience seems to have long-term effects on her, not only in the form of a constant drive to complain about the weather and to stand by the bar at pubs rather than sitting properly at a table. Said to be a good listener, it is time to see whether she has heard something worth repeating. She always has something to say – just doesn't want to interrupt any monologues. And of course, she is terrified of public speaking, which is the very reason why she is longing to latch on to that mic.

If you watch AXN SciFi, you may already have some idea how this professional scriptwriter and character actor’s mind works: which is to say, really rather strangely. Scott Alexander Young is the wild imagination behind both Max’s Midnight Movies, and Space Cadets, screening across Central Europe, even as we speak. Scott is also host of the 3D TV documentary The Medieval Trip, available VOD on the Orange Network in the UK, France, Germany and beyond.  As an actor, Scott has played a medieval lawman in TV series World Without End, a KGB spy in The Company and even a Buffalo monster on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers(!) Born in New Zealand by mistake in the same month the Beatles released their key transitional album (Rubber Soul), Scott has since lived far and wide, including Argentina, Lebanon, Italy and of course Hungary. Indeed, Budapest has been his ‘home office’ for a couple of years now. A socialite who never goes out, a slacker in tailor made clothes, and a lush who works out every day, Scott is preternaturally equipped to enjoy living in this part of the world, with all its contradictions.