“By the way, Churchill, as a psychological antidote, used to look out at his audience and imagine they were all naked.”

He doesn’t say where he got the information about Winston mentioned in that 1991 book, but I’ll bet he can tell you.

If you want a more definitive answer about whether Churchill said to imagine your audience naked, try contacting James C. Humes. He wrote a public speaking book (Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln) and also edited a book of Churchill quotations (The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill). However, I couldn’t find anything in his quotations book about naked audiences.

Also, I couldn’t find a mention of naked audiences in Churchill By Himself (the definitive collection of quotations) edited by Richard Langworth.

Whether Churchill said it or not still is a much narrower question than who said it. Ask the Churchill mavens!

Richard

Seeing the audience naked has been attributed to Winston Churchill. Three references from a Google Book Search are as follows. There are more with snippet views not showing all the words.

Dorothy Sarnoff, Speech Can Change Your Life, 1970, page 199: “Winston Churchill overcame his early fear of audiences by imagining that each of them was sitting there naked.”

Dorothy Leeds, Power Speak, 1991?, page 33, “Winston Churchill liked to imagine that each member of the audience was naked.”

G. Michael Campbell, Bulletproof Presentations, 2008, page 109: “Winston Churchill is said to have controlled his nervousness before a speech by imagining his audience naked.”

Richard Garber

There are other studies that report speaking as a top fear, but most references suggest it’s the 1977 Book of lists.

As one who has faced both several times, I will talk my way onto and off of any stage to avoid that feeling I get when facing death.

Actually found that a blurb about it here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImagineTheAudienceNaked , so maybe you’ve already come across it…