Using Humor as an Icebreaker, in Public Speaking

I can remember the very first time, I was called on at my local Toastmasters group, to give my icebreaker speech. I had to stand in front of a room full of strangers, introduce myself, and tell them, who I was and what I do. After all isn't that what everyone we meet wants to know. I stood up, told them my name and my background in the entertainment business, and my role working for my celebrity brother. The only problem was that I was no longer working for him. It's funny when people hear you have a celebrity in your family, they automatically assume, that you have what they have, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Everyone no matter who they are, still has to make their own way, their own name, and especially their own money. I simply told the audience, I was no longer working for my brother, we had parted ways, because of creative differences, and the group loved it, and thought that line, was a very funny way to put it. I'm not ashamed to say, I borrowed that line from the movie Mommy Dearest, when the actor playing Louis B. Mayer fired Joan Crawford, (played by Faye Dunnaway) from the studio. So you see how a little impromptu humor can go a long way, Remember when in need of humor, if you don't have it, Borrow it! Entertainers, are not always the outgoing people, they appear to be in the public eye, the late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. uses humor in his book "Yes I can," when describing the obstacles he had to overcome, in HOLLYWOOD, he says, about himself, what could be funnier, than a black, one eyed  Jew, and people loved him, as he achieved his own personal success, with friends like the late Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra. So learn to make a friend of humor, and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.