Do you know any venues that might be suitable? Do you run any places that might be suitable? We prefer Islington, Camden, Kings Cross, Bloomsbury or the West End. We need to be within easy reach of a tube station. We’d like a room in a pub or restaurant. We need to be able to seat 80 to 120 people. Ideally we’d like somewhere with a small stage, a PA and some lighting but we’ll look at anything.

What do we bring with us? A unique evening which has been widely covered in press and on radio. GQ called it “one of the capital’s hippest nights out”. We operate a mailing list with the names of thousands of people interested in speech entertainment, people who like a drink and are always looking for new places to eat. To give you an idea, we had over 150 names on the waiting list for last Wednesday’s gathering. We can bring a lot of customers to the right place.

If you’ve got any suggestions please get in touch via mail@truestoriestoldlive.com. And hurry!

Carolyn Drake, Jeff Poulter, Kerry Shale, Betsy De Lotbiniere, Laurel Lefkow, Piney Gir and her guitarist Garo Nahoulakian

The first of these was Laurel Lefkow, currently starring in Radio 4′s morning drama “Ethan Frome”, who related the story of how the peremptory firing of her journalist father led to a childhood of hazardous happiness in India. She was followed by Jeff Poulter, who talked about how a motorcycling holiday down the left coast of America climaxed in a bizarre encounter with a geoduck, one of the creatures that exists to remind us what a strange place that country is. Piney Gir, our musical turn, who was somewhat delayed by having mistakenly turned up at the home of host Kerry Shale, regaled us with a story from her childhood scrapbook and sang “River Song” from her new album “Geronimo!”.

Following the break Carolyn Drake held the room rapt while she recounted the events following the difficult birth of her daughter and finally Betsy De Lotbiniere recalled the year when she decided to spend the festive season in Scotland, despite being heavily pregnant and not realising the extent of the nation’s devotion to the celebration of the New Year.

In other news, Kerry Shale’s play, “The Prince Of West End Lane”, is being given a staged reading at the Globe on January 29th. You can get tickets here.

If you’re on the list then we can just check you off at the door. You don’t strictly have to print out the ticket. Oh, and sorry for getting the year wrong. It is 2012, not 2011. Sorry about that.

Likewise, sorry if you didn’t get on the list. Demand is always greater than supply. If you’ve added your name to the wait list then you will be automatically promoted as and when spaces become free.

Kate Vahl. Peter Hamlyn, Kerry Shale, Sharon Miller, Barbara Barnes and David Hepworth

Thanks to everyone who came. Thanks to Kate Vahl and Peter Hamlyn, the turns who made a return appearance to record their stories for future broadcast. Thanks to the new girls, Barbara Barnes and Sharon Miller. Thanks to the turn who didn’t show up at all, thus inflicting the story of David Hepworth’s suit on a blameless audience. Shale K. was on MC duties.

See you in the New Year.

Ramy Habeeb, Kerry Shale, Richard Strange, Deborah Saunt, Keggie Carew and Paul Moriarty.

Ramy Habeeb recounted the story of how his Egyptian father, a devoted fan of Church’s Shoes, unwittingly inspired him to start up Kotorabia, the first digital publisher in the Arab world. Architect Deborah Saunt described her mixed feelings on finding that the building on the South Bank on which she had lavished care and attention was going to be knocked down to make room for somebody else’s masterpiece. Richard Strange remembered when his group the Doctors Of Madness were supported by the Sex Pistols in 1976.

Paul Moriarty went back to the same era when a National Front march through Lewisham helped him press his suit with the beautiful Gloria. Keggie Carew’s story involved meeting her 90-year-old war hero father at Waterloo station. Kerry Shale was once more in the chair as MC.

Thanks to everyone who came. Our next gathering will be on Monday, December 19th.

The answer is you can but – just like the best performers – you will need to practise.

Some people seem to have a natural flair for taking the raw material of their personal experiences and shaping it into simple, memorable stories. That adjective “memorable” is really important. The best stories are the ones that audiences can easily explain to somebody else. They don’t have any tangents or surplus details. Like a good children’s story, they don’t contain any information that the listeners don’t need to know.

The rest of us are not quite so keen to put ourselves forward. We might have a couple of life experiences that would make a good story – but only if we really practise. Even the people who seem to have this natural flair have worked on it.

If you think you’ve got a story to tell, the best thing you can do is tell it to yourself: speak it out loud in the car or on a walk in the park. Until you’ve said it out loud you won’t know whether it’s a story or just a collection of anecdotes.

It doesn’t matter which group you belong to. Our ten-minute limit is your friend, not your enemy. There is no story that can’t be told in ten minutes. You simply have to get rid of the parts of your story which don’t need to be there. And then practise more.

In the two years we’ve been organising True Stories Told Live we’ve seen hundreds of people telling stories and this is what we’ve learned. If people are really nervous about telling their story they’ll work very hard at it and do it very well. If people think they can wing it on the basis of their natural charm, they’re wrong, no matter how experienced they happen to be.

We’d be delighted to hear from you if you’d like to tell a story at True Stories Told Live. Please get in touch via mail@truestoriestoldlive.com and one of us will go for a cup of coffee with you and talk about whether you could.

Our November show at The Compass will be on November 16th and our last one before Christmas will be on Monday, December 19th. We’ll send out the usual email asking who would like to come nearer the time. If you have any friends who would like to be invited please ask them to register in the box on the right.

Phillip Jeays, Paul Currie, Meg Rosoff, John Knepler and Richard Jobson.

Paul Currie, an engineer from Christchurch in New Zealand, has only been in Britain for a few months but he’s already told the story of his experiences in last year’s earthquake at True Stories Told Live in Brighton and we were glad to have him tell it in London as well.

Sasha Hails told the story of having to get urgent medical assistance for her handicapped 14-year-old brother one night in Paris. This is probably not the first time that somebody has used True Stories as a way to say thank-you to someone they’ve never seen since.

Our musician Philip Jeays had a story which was also based in France. In Arles, in fact, where he went as young man hoping he would be magically transformed into a painter. What he discovered was the cross-over between the snack business and the sex trade in that part of the world.

Architect John Knepler talked about his quest to find out exactly what happened to his uncle who was stranded in Austria during the war. Apparently Austrian sloppiness could often be relied on to redeem German bureaucracy during that dark time.

And finally punk singer turned film director Richard Jobson described how he persuaded Lou Reed to allow him to use one of his songs on a film soundtrack by calling in a very, very old debt.

If you’d like to come to our True Stories Told Live evening at the First Direct Dialogue Festival on November 5th, which is at the Earl of Portobello in Notting Hill, you can book your free tickets here.

And if you think you’d like to tell a story at a future event please get in touch via mail@truestoriestoldlive.com

Jon Ronson, Charlie Dore, Meg Rosoff, Viv Groskop, Hannah Greenfield and Terry Watkins.

Terry Watkins kicked off with his story about how he missed the deciding goals of the 1966 World Cup Final thanks to the fact that his very structured father insisted on taking the family to the cinema during extra time.  Next up was Viv Groskop who recalled the time she went on tour of the Ukraine with the band of her then boyfriend and discovered exactly how British she was. Our musical turn was the fabulous Charlie Dore who explained how her quest for someone who could relieve her anxiety about flying led her to write “£50 Father”.

Writer and film-maker Jon Ronson came next with two short stories about how he responded rashly to provocation from children. There was no way anybody was going to follow Hannah Greenfield with a story about her father that it would be glib to attempt to summarise here. As one correspondent put it “I am gobsmacked at Hannah’s bravery & well, grace.”

Thanks to everyone who told their stories and everyone who contributed no less by listening so carefully. Apologies if the service in the pub was a bit slower than usual. They’d just had a small staff crisis which will be sorted out in due course.

Charlie Dore’s wonderful album “Cheapskate Lullabyes” is out now, as is Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test”.

What else is happening? Meg Rosoff’s new book “There Is No Dog” is out now.  And the Silver Seas, whose Daniel Tashian was our musical turn back in the spring, are coming from Nashville to play at the Islington Academy on September 15th. Tickets are available here.