Host / Master of Ceremonies
The Voice That Holds the Evening
You hold the running order, the names and the clock, while the evening tries to take all three off you.
About the role
LIT/ME Events is looking for hosts and masters of ceremonies to lead private dinners, awards, receptions and celebrations across London.
The work is freelance and booked event by event. You are the timekeeper as much as the voice. The running order reaches you in advance, you check the names and how they are pronounced, and on the night you hold the evening to that order while the kitchen, the speakers and the client all pull at it.
Some events want a light touch: a welcome, two introductions and a goodnight. Others want you on a script or an autocue for a full programme, running to the minute, with awards to hand out. Speeches overrun and dinner lands late, so the schedule you are given at the start of the night is rarely the one you finish on. Client events stay private: no posting from the room, no names.
Responsibilities
What a night asks of you varies. In practice, the job is:
- Reading the run of show in advance, and flagging what will not work in the room
- Checking names, titles and pronunciations with the client before you say them out loud
- Making the welcome, the announcements and the introductions
- Bringing speakers, performers and award winners on and off, and covering when someone is not where they should be
- Holding the evening to time, and telling the event lead early when it is slipping
- Working from a script, autocue or cue cards when the client has written one, and from nothing when they have not
- Handling what goes wrong without the room noticing that anything has
Candidate profile
Broadcast credits are not the point. These are the things we actually look at:
- Experience compèring private dinners, awards ceremonies or corporate programmes
- A voice that holds a room on a microphone without shouting at it
- The judgement to cut your own material when the evening is running late
- Comfort with a script, an autocue, and a change to both shortly before you go on
- Fluent English; a second language is useful in this market
- Black tie, and whatever else a client’s dress code asks for
- Availability on evenings, weekends and through December
- Based in London or able to get here reliably, with the right to work in the UK
What we offer
Private and corporate clients come to LIT/ME for the right people for their occasion. When a brief needs a host, we match it to the members whose style fits, and introduce you.
- A profile on the LIT/ME site, with your photograph, your own website and your social links, in front of the clients who come to us
- Introductions matched to your kind of work, whether that is weddings, galas, award dinners, charity auctions or corporate evenings
- The client relationship stays yours: you contract with the client direct, on your own terms, and agree your fee in writing before you take anything on
- Your name alongside planners, DJs, musicians, photographers, videographers and production talent, vetted to the same standard as you, and introduced together when an occasion needs more than one of you