Steve Shepherd runs True Stories Told Live in Cardiff. He told his story at their first meeting and then told it again in London last week. In this clip he describes the experience.

Sorry if the picture above looks a bit photo-booth. I took it. This month’s TSTL came together with more than the usual level of improvisation (a couple of late withdrawals forced a couple of late subs) but it came together nonetheless. We were delighted to be able to welcome our first ever overseas turn when Mary Gauthier, the great American songwriter, came along to tell the personal story behind her new record “The Foundling”. In Britain finding your birth mother involves an agreed procedure and the careful supervision of a social worker. In New Orleans all you need is five hundred dollars to pay a private detective. It’s an astonishing story. Mary came after broadcaster-writer Gianluca Tramontana who wasn’t the first TSTL turn to recall the floodlit moments around the death of a close family member but certainly the first one to describe the palliative part played on this occasion by marijuana. Susan Marling of Just Radio began the evening with the tale of how she went to New Zealand determined to describe its tranquility and instead found herself in the most hazardous environment on earth. Claire Macdonald described one of those bizarre and touching brief encounters that can only be thrown up by the random nature of the public transport system. Finally Arnold Brown, who could justifiably be preceded with the adjective “legendary”, talked about the night he became a comedian with just the one joke. The evening was MC’d by Kerry Shale. Here’s his new website. (I particularly recommend the clip from “Sorry”.)

How do I know if I’ve got a story?
The key skill of a good storyteller is that they can look at the raw clay of their own experience and make out the shape of a story within it. One good test of a story is that you will probably have told it before, maybe just to friends, and they will have passed it on to other people. That pass-it-on factor is one sign of a good story. If it doesn’t pass that it’s probably an experience rather than a story.

What sort of thing are we looking for?
Impossible to answer. We’re fascinated by people who’ve had experiences, done jobs, been places and seen things that we haven’t: served with the Guards in Afghanistan, stolen a painting from an art gallery, defended a petty criminal in court or attended a high end bondage party in Paris, for instance. Then again lots of our best stories have been quite simple tales of experiences we’ve all had: love affairs, career reverses, problems with family, being caught short on London Transport after overdoing the syrups at a well-known fast food outlet. That kind of thing.

How do I know whether I could stand up in front of those people without notes and talk for no longer than twelve minutes?
Because you’re no fool and you will have organised your story into a beginning, a middle and an end, left out anything that doesn’t need to be in it, got rid of all those jokes that are just there because you can’t resist getting a laugh and then, most importantly of all, you’ll have practised and practised and practised. If True Stories had a motto it would be the famous golfer’s one: “The harder I practise, the luckier I get.”

Do I have to audition?
We wouldn’t have put it as formally as that but we would certainly want to talk to you a few weeks beforehand and advise you how best to tell the story. Some of our storytellers are quite experienced while others are doing it for the first time. In either case they seem to appreciate our input.

Still not put off. What do I do now?
Get in touch and one of our highly-trained advisors will get in touch with you and talk further about it. Don’t worry. No salesman or bearded bloke with a bell on the end of a stick will visit your home.

I was talking to somebody in the bar following last night’s True Stories who asked if the story tellers practise beforehand. I happen to know that they do because it’s the only thing that we try to emphasise to people who are getting ready to do it. It’s funny how we accept that people who can play an instrument or master a sport can do that because they’ve put in hours or practice but still think that we could get up and tell a twelve minute story to a room full of strangers without having worked it out beforehand and spent a good deal of time polishing it, either in our head or to the empty air.

All last night’s turns had clearly done a lot of planning and that’s one of the reasons they were all so good. Oliver Bullough told a story which didn’t make it into his new book Let our Fame Be Great which is about his travels in the Caucasus. It was told to him by an elderly man in the former Soviet Union about a harrowing incident at the end of the Second World War. The man had been looking all his life for somebody to tell it to and fixed upon Oliver, who took this opportunity to pass it on to us and I’m very glad he did.

Cindy Oswin is a writer and performer who has written for opera and film and is currently making a history of British Experimental theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe in collaboration with the British Library. Her story was set in theatrical digs in Derby in the early 60s and depicted a situation involving a young women trapped in the bath. How you can get trapped in a bath is something that Cindy may tell you on personal application.

I’m writing this first thing in the morning with Martha Tilston‘s new album “Lucy & The Wolves” for company. It very much suits this time of day. Martha told the story of what she’d learned from a landlady in Dublin which led to her singing “My Chair”, from her new album, which comes out next month.

After the break we had David Roper. At each TSTL we’ve been lucky to have a story from somebody who had attended a previous event and thought “I’d like to do that”. David runs Heavy Entertainment, which is one of London’s leading producers of audiobooks, but this was the first time he had done anything like this which made his impact even more remarkable. I won’t attempt to pass on the story here but suffice to say it encompassed Catholicism, drug smuggling, the internet and a contact from “the other side”.

Finally, a full week before St Patrick’s Day, we had Angela Clerkin with the story of how she learned some hard lessons about life and show business in the Irish Dancing Competitions of her youth. This story turned on a theme that would be familiar to anyone who has seen “The X Factor”. I didn’t mention that Angela was in “The Office” because I didn’t want everyone to be thinking about that but, well, she was.

I did the MCing because Kerry was filming in the Lake District and a splendid time seemed to be had by all. Thanks very much to everyone who came and particularly those who contributed.

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