GOTG 2014 - Round 5 - February 2014

Round 5 Winner - Matt Tricks

Matt Tricks and his family left London five years ago after a sad incident involving an Overdose - not of Cocaine sadly, but of the fantastic Hungarian racehorse of that name, whose destiny to run at Ascot was denied by injury. By quite some furlongs, he is the oldest Vet student in town, but is now on the final bend for the uphill pull to the finish. When not studying he can be found trying to manage Orczy football club, or his unruly children, and is not sure which is the harder task. The last time he spoke in public was at his wedding, when his speech in German went down like a 'Blei-Ballon', and he is hoping for better this time!

Round 5 Competitors

Tim Child is the Managing Director of LBS, a language and business training services company based in Budapest. He is a former Director with a large UK company and rashly entered the GOTG last year in exchange for Mary Murphy agreeing to wear orange plats at the next St Patrick’s parade (she wore a beard instead!). Having studied past form he feels he needs to declare an Irish connection and is happy to say that he is 1/32 Irish. He also feels that coming back a second time might be his biggest mistake since agreeing to allow the BBC to follow him around for a year with a camera in a 1999 docusoap; but then it is all in a good cause.

Attila Szabó has a degree in Electrical Engineering. In reality, he never got excited when he was told how he could check the difference between a normal line and a line with bad soldering. So, after two and a half years, he left his job as a service level manager and took a different route. He went to prison to join Willy Benkő in training inmates at the Kozma street prison. He went to the Budapest Toastmasters Club to improve his presentations skills (he even took the role of the President for a year). And he started his own Hungarian public speech training course. On summer weekends, he earns a living by emceeing weddings. He also works as IT specialist...just for fun (and for a living as well of course).

Attila Szigeti is a Hungarian Project Manager, a TED fan, and since 2013, a member of Budapest Toastmasters. First time he attempted college, he fell in love with a student NGO (IAESTE) where he volunteered for six years - and forgot about getting the degree. He travelled around Europe, and even got to fly a small airplane over Switzerland (but just for a few minutes). His second college attempt is in progress, only threatened by his ever growing affection with start-ups… In his free time, Attila runs, swims, and looks for opportunities to expand his comfort zone.

Franc Anderson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and immediately qualified for a mis-spent youth. Educated for life rather than work, he has engaged with one and largely ignored the other. A life-long athlete, he has run more than once around the Earth and  experienced countless cheap thrills on badminton courts where the manner was infinitely more important than the result. Easily seduced by expensive, precision-made equipment he ‘worked’ his way from quality motorcycles and cameras produced by large numbers of Italians and Japanese, to quality brushes produced from large numbers of rare, furry animals. For the last 6 years he has been heavily involved with the docent - guiding - programmes in both the Lugwig Museum of Contemporary Art and the Budapest Museum of Fine Art. As a consequence he has come to understand the tenants of the Catholic church and be in awe of, for example, El Greco more than any self-respecting protestant ought to. He suffers from the hope that egy szep napon  he may justify the astronomic amount he has spent on watercolour paint. His Speakeazy business partner hopes that this day will dawn soon and that all that discussion, planning and research they have invested over the last 3 years will establish them as experts in, amongst other things, making money rather than spending it.