My dream came true on Valentine’s Day.

I went to see a live performance of my favourite comedian, Russell Peters.

Russell’s energy is amazing.

When I heard that he would be performing at the o2 Arena, I couldn’t picture him reaching out to 18,000 people and engaging them in his fuzzy embrace the way he does on tape with a much smaller audience.

But he did. There is something about him that makes you feel included in everything he says. Forget presentation skills training! You want to learn how to reach out to an audience and bond with them? Go and listen to Russell Peters.

Russell is the most downloaded comedian ever. He owes his success to the power of the internet.

And it’s that power I felt the moment I entered the o2 Arena. I couldn’t believe that all those people were there just because they had seen one of his routines that began circulating on the web 5 or 6 years ago. It was so overwhelming….

I was also overwhelmed by the fact that, for some strange reason, I felt close to the other people there… Do we all identify with Russell’s jokes because we live abroad and at some point someone made fun of us? Is Russell’s humour a way to exorcise these experiences?

Who knows?!? I certainly love his routines. I know so many by heart. On Saturday, I even got the T-shirt that says $ 34.50 in Chinese-like characters. And I am going to wear it to the gym (yes…I will blog about the reactions…).

We went backstage and met Russell (in the photo with me and my husband Doug).

And look at us! Don’t we look related? As he says, it’s because his parents come from the Italian part of India…. Calcutta!!

I know some of my readers have been enjoying the Russell Peters routine I posted a while ago.

Here is another one. I have a rabbit – not a real one – and I’ve named him… Tap Sum Bong.

Great news! Russell Peters will be performing in London on 14 February.

My readers know how totally addicted I am to Russell Peters….and in particular (given my love for China) to this routine of his.

To my family’s despair, I know the lines by heart and keep repeating them…

And…. last week in Italy, I caught my father saying “Be a man” with Russell’s Chinese accent.

Shall I get the $ 34.50 T-shirt?? I promise I’ll wear it only at the gym…

I watched the New Hampshire primary last night.

And that got me thinking about the whole business of charisma and what you need to be a good public speaker (thinking about this helped me to recover from the shock of seeing Madeleine Albright on CNN again).

I have given a fair amount of presentations over the years and have witnessed many public speakers.

I do a lot of watching at conferences. I sit there and really try to concentrate on the speaker, his/her personality, the way they bond with the audience, etc.

I have spoken in several countries and have always been fascinated by the cultural differences.

If you are giving a presentation in the US, you have to think show business. Audiences like to be entertained as much as they want to be informed. You have to be high energy and make sure that everybody in the room feels your presence.

Presenting in Europe is less exhausting. You don’t have to do much song-and-dance, but make sure you have a lot of figures and statistics lined up (particularly if you speaking in Germany).

And of course there are always surprises.

I was once giving a presentation in Rome and happened to mention Paris Hilton without thinking much of it.

Boy, did I get the attention of the Italian guys in the audience?!

You should have seen them jumping on their chairs.

Now you know what you have to do, next time you are speaking to a room full of Italian male communicators.

However, mentioning Paris Hilton’s name should be enough, I would not recommend using any of her media projects as case studies.

One of the best audiences I have ever had was in Kuala Lumpur. The energy in the room was so gentle, so Asian. The people were so eager to share and learn. So different from the show-me-what-you-got attitude you sometimes encounter in the West.

The success of a presentation depends hugely on the kind of energy a speaker is able to create in the room. And positive energy, like charisma, is so hard to define. You can only describe it when you see it, because you know it’s there. It makes people feel good. It makes them feel part of an experience.

I have been having fun lately studying the energy part of public speaking.

You can learn a lot from great comedians.

I love Russell Peters, Lee Evans and Jon Stewart. I love how they bond with the audience. They are addictive.

I got diction lessons from an opera singer once. She taught me how to pronounce the endings of German words (Austrians don’t really do that) in a way that would enable my voice to be heard in the back of the room.

According to her, a great speaker is one who is able to mesmerize the audience and transport it into another world.

Would someone please mesmerize me so that I can forget some of the stuff I heard last night on CNN???

Photo: thanks to welt.de

I used to be sensitive about people imitating Italians but not any more.

Not since I heard Russell Peters.

It all started a couple of years ago when my friend Piero sent me this short video. Among the piles of junk he sends me (yes, it is true Italians are eternal children on a constant search for racy jokes), this video turned out to be a real gem.

Russell Peters is a Canadian comedian of Indian descent. He changed my life and the way I look at accents.

He has an incredible ear for accents. He goes over them in his head and puts them together in his mind.

He says he uses humour to help people feel better about themselves and their cultures.

The way he imitates not only Italians, but also his fellow Indians, Chinese, Jamaicans, Mexicans, etc. is incredibly funny and sweet.

It feels like a fuzzy embrace.

Let’s be honest, these days everybody is fed up with false political correctness that is so often used to dress up real offense and stereotyping.

Russell Peters is like a breath of fresh air.

No wonder he has become the most downloaded comedian in the history of the Internet.