What must it be like to be on one of those improv shows like Whose Line is it Anyway? You’re fed an idea and you have to go somewhere funny with it right now. Spectacular fun for the audience when it works, but it must be terrifying for the performers, no?

At this week’s Vancore meeting three veterans tested their own chops on the comedy high-wire. In Table Topics, each got a “one-liner” to riff on. These weren’t particularly funny one-liners. They were stale old chestnuts. For the contestants this was a good thing: there was nowhere to go but up.

“Why,” Susan asked Borzo, “did the chicken cross the road?”

Borzo, first out of the chute, had no real context for this exercise, and he took a few seconds to find his feet. He began thinking aloud. Why would a chicken be so ambitious? What would drive such a high-risk maneuver? Clearly this was a chicken with mental-health issues.

Within seconds, Borzo was on fire.

“I know that chicken,” he said. “It was run over by a bus. My wife works at Translink. The whole thing created a real PR mess.”

Jonathan got, if possible, an even hoarier joke: “Why do cows have bells? (Answer: Because their horns don’t work.)

Away he went. He painted a scene. Picture if you will, Toronto, circa 1830. Hogtown. “Also cowtown – a lot of people don’t know that.” Cows roamed freely. Pastureland encroached on the city and its prestigious law school Osgood Hall. You have to understand, University was different then. Studying was serious business. You didn’t want to be distracted in the quad by some cow suddenly in your face. “That’s why they put bells on ‘em.”

It was Kate’s turn. Question: If drinking-and-driving is a no-no, why do bars have parking lots?

This was the hardest question of all. It was more a Zen parable than a joke. Also: Kate was supposed to find the funny in driving-and-driving?

Somehow, she did. After some early meandering around with stories of drunken shenanigans in her own family, she got down to business.

“No, no no: seriously. Those spaces are for the designated driver. And who is the designated driver? Usually the loser of the group. You know, the one who’s the least-fun drunk.”

It is a thing of beauty to watch an experience toastmaster take a deep breath and just go for it. They trust that a “money line” down there somewhere, waiting to be dug out.

This is how the Drew Careys and Colin Mochries of the world are born – in trials-by-fire very much like one, falling flat as often as they killed. There has to be something at stake, a real audience, even a friendly one like ours. The stakes bring the tension that brings the magic.

Alone in front of the bathroom mirror, you could try to find that money line.

But you’d be trying till the cows come home.

VanCore president Kate has a drill she does with her ESL students to keep their language skills sharp. It goes like this:

“Talk to me about bananas.”

Off the student will go, on the subject of bananas, but fifteen or twenty seconds in, just as they’re gaining momentum, Kate will cut in and divert them to a new subject, based on a word they just casually uttered.

“Never mind about bananas,” she’ll say, “tell me about Peru.” And off they go in that new direction.

It’s a game perfectly suited for Table Topics and this week she deployed it.

Kate: “Okay, Connie, tell us about opera.”

Connie: “Maybe the highest expression of the human spirit, right? The drama, the melodrama, these perfectly honed voices. I heard a soprano sing a Norma that was right on the money…”

Kate: “Never mind about opera. Tell us about money.”

Connie: “Some among us are delinquent in our membership dues. Come on, people: if we don’t get the money, this club is toast.”

Kate: “Never mind about money. Tell us about toast.”

Bonus points if you can do this without dropping a stitch. And again and again, this week’s members did it.

Kate: “Talk to us about presidents.”

Nicky: “So many different varieties, from all sides of the political spectrum. Of course Kate has given me that topic because I am your incoming president. You should know, I plan to rule with an iron hand.” [Laughter.] “If anyone doesn’t play ball I’ll be booting them out the door.”

Kate: “Never mind about presidents. Tell me about doors.”

Nicky: “An underappreciated part of any home or office. The door is like a face: it announces the character behind it.”

Doing Table Topics this way is like high-altitude training. If you can survive it, it’s hard to imagine any social situation you couldn’t ace.

The weirdest role at any Toastmasters meeting has to be that of the “um” and “ah” counter. It’s an important job – because speakers tent not to hear their own verbal tics, so it’s valuable to be presented with the evidence of how many “like”- or “you know”-bombs slipped out. But it still feels strange to be the counter, sitting there quietly like a leopard in a eucalyptus tree, waiting to pounce on vulnerability.

At VanCore, the um/ah counter also performs the role of grammarian, which feels a bit more, um, prosocial. You get to beef up everybody’s vocabulary by introducing a new word. And then you listen for how many people are able to use it at the meeting, and how deftly they slip it in.

This week Jesse, a new member, gave one of her first speeches from the Competent Communicator’s Manual. The um/ah counter often feasts on the speeches of newbies. The talks are sometimes so peppered with filler words they sound like what hockey players say to reporters between periods on NHL broadcasts. And by the way, there’s no shame in that. It’s how you learn. The triumph is in the getting up there and going for it.

But Jesse left the counter feeling like a working dog that … had no work. She told of the tradition, among certain West Coast First Nations groups, of ceremonial, long-distance canoe trips. It was an inspiring tale, with quotes from participants and just enough history to give the whole thing ballast. But more to the point, it was linguistically perfect. No um’s, em’s, ah’s, so’s, like’s, ya-know’s. Nothing but net. Beautiful.

The counter was left frozen in place, pencil poised over a blank page. The um’s and ah’s were his currency – and he had nothing. He felt impecunious. Which happened to be the word of the day.

And, oh yeah: Jesse used that, too.

What do you make of a guy beginning a speech with his measurements? Who does that? Maybe he’s hoping you’ll hire him to do underwear modeling. Or he’s not feeling well and has decided to order a pine casket just in case. Or he’s hoping to be upgraded to business class because, you see, he just doesn’t fit the economy seats.

Vincent opened his icebreaker speech this week with his measurements for a different reason. A better one. He wanted to show us the way his mind works.

“I’m five-one,” he said. “A hundred six pounds.” Standing there, he wasn’t a whole lot taller than the lectern. He still sometimes buys his clothes in the kids’ section, he admitted with a shy smile. “How old do you think I am?” Vincent asked the group, putting us on the spot. Turns out he’s twenty-four. He could probably pass for sixteen, in low light.

Vincent was saying to us, Here I Am in a way that made perfect sense from his perspective. He is the sum of the details about him. His is a mind that looks at the world from the molecular level. He’s a tree man, not a forest man. “I’m actually a little jealous of people who see the big picture,” he said.

It turns out, though, that this is all tremendous luck for Vincent. Being a tree man is advantageous for the work he does. Vincent’s a software designer. You’ve got to be able to look for bugs in individual lines of code. It’s like looking for mistakes in a huge handmade carpet and systematically fixing them. When you’re all done you can stand back and admire the design on the whole rug, but until then you don’t even see it.

Vincent was soft-spoken and thoughtful and altogether winning. He’ll be a great addition to VanCore. We know him a little better now. He showed us his component parts.

This week’s jam-packed meeting featured not one by two competitions – an evaluation contest and the International Speech Contest, which pitted John’s boiling charisma against Bruce’s nerdy preparation.

Lorne, who chaired, was kept busy doffing one hat and donning another. He was setting up. Then he was telling people where to go. He was an icebreaker and a headwaiter and an interviewer. At some point he might even have parked someone’s car.

Visitor Margaret delivered a spectacularly moving and theatrical speech that the three evaluators – Angela, Megan and Bruce – somehow had to find constructive criticism about.

Lots of people quietly did their jobs well. Debra was a graceful sergeant-at-arms, and Vincent a meticulous ballot-counter.

Nicky covered the timing role like a Trojan. It was important job. Any contestant who went overtime – or under time – was disqualified.

In the end, Bruce nosed out John in the speech contest. (Though John handily won the subsequent fight in the alley.)

A quick hat-tip in closing to, of all things, a bank.

The ING on Howe Street has a boardroom it makes available to folks for nonprofit, first-come-first-served use. It’s where we met this week when our usual digs were unavailable to us.

That room is what’s sometimes called a “third space.” It’s not public, not commercial (you don’t have to buy anything) — just a private spot for people to gather. It’s an emergency lilypad for groups like us who need to get together to talk and listen to each other.

The regional speech contest goes March 25.

Next week we’re back at our usual meeting place at 889 West Pender — fingers crossed.

There’s something special about Speech #10 in the Competent Communicator Manual. It’s the one all the others have been building to. If you’ve made it to 10, you’ve learned to stem the panic, to apply solid research, to focus your message, to control your voice, to use gestures that don’t look like tics, to use visual aids other than the sweat-blooms under your armpits, and to make a persuasive pitch for, well, whatever you’re pitching. Now it’s time to reach for the brass ring. It’s time to inspire.

This week Kate, who happens to be Vancore’s president, picked a perfect subject for her outshot: the “therapeutic journey” of one Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the great redeemed villains in all of literature.

People still read or watch A Christmas Carol in droves this time of year (okay, sometimes the Muppet version), Kleenex boxes at hand, because Dickens captured something universal and heart-stabbingly poignant about human nature. He made you feel for a scoundrel. He made you suspend your judgment of scoundrels in general, because scoundrels usually had their temperament thrust upon them. He made readers understand that it’s never too late for anyone to change for the better.

Kate, in her beguiling British accent, unpacked the Scrooge story, even bringing Freud in to the conversation. And then, emotionally, she doubled down. She got personal. She told how she was waiting at a bus stop recently when a stranger, a little short on his luck, tried to engage her. She didn’t brush him off, but she didn’t exactly give him all of herself either. She was stingy with her energy, with her smile. Kate is no Scrooge, but she wishes now she had let herself crack open a bit more. “Be generous,” was Kate’s message, to herself and to everyone around the table.

And on that inspiring note, Kate officially became a Competent Communicator. Not that there was ever any doubt.

From all of us at Vancore, the very best of the holiday season.