Durwood Fincher

Durwood Fincher, a.k.a. Dr. Robert Payne, is an entertainer, a linguist and an insightful comedian, whose specialty is corporate communications. Fincher has been the secret ingredient at hundreds of successful corporate functions, making certified heroes out of meeting planners since 1981. He is on the road an average of 200 days a year. Mr. Fincher has made numerous appearances on The Huckabee Show,The Today Show and Live with Regis and Kelly. Fincher’s hilarious take on corporate culture is personalized for each of his clients, their business, and even their attendees who become the true stars in the hysterical video finale.

Durwood Fincher provides an unexpected, refreshing experience for the corporate audience, a hilarious way for them to examine, reexamine and improve communications skills for themselves and others. As Dr. Robert Payne, he portrays the bad example, the worst-case scenario of contemporary business-speak, using language to mislead. This bumbling, bureaucratic stereotype (familiar to attendees of conferences nationwide) uses mind-numbing language, designed to distort reality, make the bad seem good and the intolerable seem tolerable.

Introduced as Dr. Payne, head of a government agency which is pertinent to your industry, his presentation is salted through and through with your own company’s buzzwords, jargon and other familiar references, to further the confusion. This curious-looking executive is passed off as an inside-the-beltway dork. The audience will first have mixed reactions: settling down for a tedious half hour or so; getting ready to take copious notes; wishing they were somewhere else – anywhere else. But within minutes, Fincher will be having his way with their funnybones.

Following his bogus introduction by your host, ‘Dr. Payne’ begins his bogus presentation which sounds like he is making sense. But if you listen carefully, it becomes obvious that what he is saying makes no sense whatsoever. Slowly the crowd begins to catch on. First there is a titter. Then a few laughs. Then lots of laughs.

After the charade of Dr. Payne is exposed, Fincher swings into a fast-paced laugh filled sketch of real-life anecdotes about the funny foibles of people attempting to communicate with one another, against all odds. The audience, always forgiving, can’t get enough.

With Durwood Fincher on the program, the people in the audience enjoy themselves and come away refreshed, having learned the message that we all must strive to communicate more concisely and clearly. Your meeting glides on effortlessly, successfully, in an atmosphere cleansed by laughter.

In the comic tradition of Candid Camera and America’s Funniest Home Videos, Mr. Fincher offers the perfect complement to his speech: videotaped interviews of your attendees.