I’m always interested in people who work with their voice or in voiceovers and so an obituary this week caught my eye. It was for a man who worked as a voice actor and had provided a voiceover that was at once familiar to millions while he himself would have remained virtually unknown. This was Brian Cobby, the voice actor who died this week aged 83.
His voice career had included VO’s for TV commercials for Stork margarine and soap flakes in the days when ITV was relatively new. It’s claimed  he was also the voice of the famous “5,4,3,2,1” Thunderbirds opening sequence  announcement.
He also had a proper thespian background too, having played in a number of Shakespearian and other stage productions.

But by all accounts his most significant voice-over gig was in 1984 when he won a competition to become the voice of the Speaking Clock. Older people will instantly know what that means but for younger people the idea that you could pick up the phone and call a number to told by a pre-recorded voice that “at the third stroke the time will be 8.31 and twenty seconds precisely” followed by 3 tone beeps may seem bizarre.

In fact Cobby was the third permanent voice to be used – his announcements could be heard from 1985 to 2007.  According to The Guardian he was paid £5,000 for the gig (but I’m guessing no repeat fees!) and, according to The Mail it only took him an hour to record the 86 words needed to make up the 8,640 announcements used by the recorded service.
5 Grand for an hour of recording! Nice work if you can get it.

There are several things here that I find amazing. The first is that the Speaking Clock still exists – in fact you can call it today on 123 (landlines only) where you’ll hear the dulcet tones of Sara Mendes de Costa – the 4th permanent voice of the speaking clock.

The second thing is that, according to the BBC, the service still gets more than 30 million calls a year.
Really? Who these days calls the Speaking Clock? Well according to the BBC the Metropolitan Police do – last year their calls to the service totalled £35,000!

And the third thing is this: Sara Mendes de Costa says that for people of a certain generation “they grew up on the Speaking Clock”. In fact she claims her first telephone call as a child was to the service.  I understand that – I can remember calling it when I was young too – my Mum always liked to call it TIM even though the voice was that of a woman Pat Simmons (the 2nd voice from 63-85). But after leaving home I can’t remember a single moment when I would have rung the speaking clock.

So here’s a slightly sad thing – Brian Cobby was the first and only male voice on the Speaking Clock and his voice was used on there for 22 years…..but up until this week I never even knew that the Speaking Clock had used a male voice – I had always assumed it was a woman’s voice that was used.

However there’s a quote from the late Brian Cobby in The Guardian that I like – he said:
“A good voice ought to have warmth, clarity and sometimes authority”

I like that definition – it’s more or less what I’ve always thought about voiceovers…now if I could only land a gig for 22 years that paid today’s equivalent of 5 grand in 1985 I think I’d be quite happy!