Mark Colbourne

“Mark came to award the Prizes at our end of year Speech Day, addressing an audience of 750 people aged between 6 and 86 who he had them rapt with attention.  Mark spoke for 30 minutes, without notes, and told us his story. You could have heard a pin drop. Afterwards, many speakers would have politely made their excuses, offered their apologies and slipped away.  Mark stayed for lunch and then spent two and a half hours amongst us, signing autographs, posing for photographs with pupils with his Olympic Gold Medal and chatting to parents and children, during the Inter-House Athletics event which followed the speeches, despite knowing that he and Rachel had a very long journey home to Cardiff from Junction 5 on the M25. Mark was quite simply inspirational.  Everybody is still talking about him.  He has set the bar at a very high level and he will be the standard against which all future outside speakers will be judged from now on.  I do not envy them.  I would recommend Mark Colbourne to anybody who wants a speaker who will be inspirational and memorable. Quite superb!” 

“Excellent style and delivery. I have engaged the services of many speakers in my career and Mark is by far the best. He is friendly, relaxed and a good raconteur.  He completely engaged the audience.  On the night we had a gentleman who collapsed during Mark’s presentation and he dealt with this extremely professionally and when he started his talk after the situation had been dealt with he didn’t miss a beat — just got straight back into it.  We had people in the audience give him a standing ovation at the end – I’ve never seen that before. Mark had quite clearly done his homework about the local authority and on the evening presented one of the councillors with a framed gold winners stamp, which was a lovely touch.  Mark had obviously read the brief I had sent and covered the points we had discussed in his presentation.”

“Mark’s recent presentation to our national Sales team was uplifting, inspirational and a fantastic way to end the event! His personal story of courage in the face of such adversity, setting really stretching personal goals and his commitment to achieving them will inspire even the most cynical amongst us to achieve more…”

“We are incredibly grateful to Mark for presenting at the Sports Awards evening on Tuesday. With the change in leadership and priorities of the school, it was so important that we made this an outstanding evening. With Mark’s contribution, it was indeed just that. The fact that he was given a standing ovation was a testament as to how good he was. The feedback from the headteacher was that Mark was the best guest speaker she had been witness too despite having a seen a considerable number over the years. To have obtained someone of Mark’s calibre as the guest speaker meant the evening will live long in the memory of those fortunate to have heard Mark’s story.”

“Mark Colbourne MBE was an absolute pleasure to have at the Wiltshire Business and Sports Annual Gala Dinner this year. This is the second dinner that Mark has spoken at for us and his emotional story had enough variation that it was just as brilliant as the first time. Mark is truly inspiring and thoroughly recommended.”