Commodore Eric Thomson

Eric Thomson MBE is a former Commodore of the Nuclear Submarine base Faslane. A brilliant and engaging after dinner speaker, Author, Poet & Burns Aficionado. Eric is a unique and highly entertaining speaker for dinners, Burns suppers and business events.

Eric writes I began my after dinner speaking career under the Atlantic when I had to toast ‘The Immortal Memory’ of Nelson on Trafalgar Night in HMS Revenge whilst on strategic nuclear deterrent patrol. As a Scot, it was not long before I was also being asked to toast ‘The Immortal Memory’ of Robert Burns at Burns suppers but never underwater – except for one winter’s night in Renfrew when even the concurrent Rangers game was postponed due to a flooded pitch.

By the time I had risen to be Commodore of the Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane, my reputation as a speaker had, without any input from me, grown legs and had spread beyond the Navy. I have since performed at dinners from Plymouth to Aberdeen including a Variety Club of Gresat Britain bash at the London Hilton. Other grand venues include the Great Hall of Stirling Castle; London’s Grosvenor House Hotel; Glasgow City Chambers; Edinburgh’s Signet Library; Draper’s Hall in the City of London; and Lancaster’s magnificent town hall where I had the honour of being the only speaker at the 2001 Submarine Centenary Banquet.

However, I still enjoy the more intimate audience and have completed Strathclyde University’s Stand-Up Comedy course – I even performed in a Glasgow comedy club but only for the final exam. Standing on one’s hind legs, speaking without notes in front of a potentially hostile audience certainly stimulates the nerves – and the bowels. Undeterred, I performed in the first Glasgow International Festival of Comedy and was praised on BBC’s Fred Macaulay Show. However, stand-up comedy was not my ambition. I only did it in the hope of improving my after-dinner speaking.

I am now equally comfortable telling a farcical tale; reciting comic verse; singing one of my songs; accompanying himself on the harmonica; or delivering a serious message. Sugaring the pill is my speciality.  Invariably, I try to tailor my speeches to suit the audience – but audiences are unpredictable and always have the potential to delight or disappoint. One of my most appreciative audiences was the Helensbnurgh Stroke Club where a dozen or so stroke-afflicted folk, accompanied by their carers, were waiting to hear me at eleven o’clock in the morning. How was I going to get through this, I wondered? They were brilliant. I’ll never forget the lady in a wheelchair who just sat beaming at me. At the end, her husband came over to say how much she had enjoyed my talk. When I said to her that she had been a terrific audience, she just kept beaming. ‘She can’t reply,’ said her husband. ‘Since her stroke, she’s been unable to speak.’

I have now tackled audiences of all ages and types from schoolchildren to senior citizens; ‘stag’ to ‘hen’; corporate to club; military to civilian; and English to Scots and have  been in regular demand as a compere, speaker and performance poet.  Following publication of, ‘On Her Majesty’s Nuclear Service’, in 2018, I have added literary festivals to my repertoire, most recently at Glasgow’s ‘Aye Write’ and the Berwick Literary Festivals.

In sum, I deliver tailored speeches. I do not simply stand up and spout a sequence of jokes. Occasionally, I stray into polite vulgarity but I do not do blue jokes.

I enjoy interacting with an appreciative audience but it has become clear over the years that most dinner organisers have no idea of the effort that goes into preparing a speech. Even when recycling old material, I still have to choose it from a large stock and then put it together, edit it down to my allotted time (so many amateur speakers simply dribble on with no idea of timing). Then I rehearse it against a stopwatch. Most people think that I just turn up and talk. That is the mark of a true professional; to sound as if you have just turned up and are talking off the cuff – like the well-rehearse ad-lib.  And then there is travelling time. When asked to speak in the South of England, for example, it’s one day travel each way plus the evening of the event and all the preparation before that, a week’s work for one thirty minute speech. As I’m often expected to do all this as a favour, I now have an agent.