Talking about cake.

So I like to talk. A lot. I have many things I'm passionate about and love to share that with others. I have given lectures and demonstrations to vast auditoria filled with hungover students in my time, and given talks about pinhole photography, how exposure settings in cameras work, the joy of film, panoramic photography and whatever has interested me over the last couple of days. Performing in front of an audience doesn't really give me fear; over the years I've done standup, learned clowning skills, and also appeared on cookery shows on ITV. I did quite well on the last one.

Anyway, this year I am resolved to talk about cake at least once in front of an audience. Cake is such an interesting thing, and the people who make it are equally as interesting and this should be celebrated. But it won't be a meandering burble; oh no, I have a plan.

Y'see, there's a thing called Bettakultcha. Because I live in Leeds, in The North, I'm keen to attend local events and this one is a corker. You get 20 slides and 20 seconds to talk about each slide - it's the 20x20 protocol - and it has to be something you're passionate about. Previous talks have looked fascinating and I've always been too late to book a ticket to this, but the next one has just been announced (July 13th) and the temptation to offer a talk is huge. So I'm toying with that.

But that's not all; Londoners are probably well acquainted with the idea of Interesting; an unconference, series of talks on a similar kind of lines to Bettakultcha. As an idea Interesting has been around for a couple of years and many people I know have gone and raved about it (and more than one has presented). Interesting is coming north this year (Nov 13th), so I'm really tempted to take the talk I do at Bettakultcha and run with it into a full-length affair in Sheffield.

Can I do 20 minutes on cake? Good god, yes.

I suppose the question is, are people interested?