I’ve just spend a couple of minutes listening to one of those ‘fun’ articles on Radio Four’s Today programme about a webcam which is showing a cheese. The cheese isn’t doing anything except sitting there, maturing.
Now, I know the intervewee wasn’t a professional (bless him!) but the questions weren’t exactly probing and nor did they take an unexpected turn. You know the sort of thing: “When do you expect the cheese to be mature?”. Unfortunately for the level of interest in the programme it appears that this was a killer question without the option to Phone a Friend, 50-50, or Ask the Audience.
I felt like screaming at the radio: “For heaven’s sake, man! Did it not occur to you that you were going to be asked that question before you came on air - in fact wasn’t it on your mind when you set up the webcam…. or even when you started being a cheesemaker!”.
For him and for people like him, here’s a tip. Improvised does not equal extemporised. In other words, just because you’re making it up as you go along, doesn’t mean you have to make it up from scratch as you go along. If you can think of the obvious questions, prepare the obvious answers. If you can’t think of any obvious questions two things spring to mind
You probably haven’t got an easy story and you might want to think of a different angle!; and
There’s no reason you can’t pre-prepare ‘part answers’ and simply put them together on the fly.
Anything…. anything to avoid the “Well, errr…. I suppose sometime about…. err….. it depends.” It make you sound like an idiot.
Of course, that’s easier said than done but easier once you’ve had some practice on a presentation skills course! 
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