ABSTRACT

What is a ‘good’ broadcasting voice? If you ask any group of people – and I’ve been asking media students the question for a good dozen years or so – you’ll get at least as many answers as there are people in the room. Somebody will like John Humphrys because he sounds ‘strong and doesn’t take any crap’. Somebody else will loathe him because they think he is aggressive and hectoring. Someone will pick one of the Radio Four newsreaders (say, Peter Donaldson or Rory Morrison) or a TV voice like Dermot Murnaghan – ‘rich, smooth, such authority’ – and immediately there’ll be a moan from the other side of the room that compared to the energy of voices on independent radio, his style is too formal, the pace too slow, the smoothness positively soporific. Eventually someone will get around to remembering that women broadcast too, and we might then have a lively debate on Davina McCall (‘sassy’ or ‘too sharp’), Sarah Montague (‘cool and confident’ versus ‘public school head girl’), or Jenni Murray (‘friendly’ or ‘too mumsy’?). Sara Cox on Radio One always divides people – some love her brashness and strong accent, others find it harsh and abrasive. We rarely reach a consensus as we compile our list, because voice is often inseparable from personality and the style of a network or programme. Indeed, the point is to demonstrate exactly how wide the range is of successful broadcasting voices. It would be a poor and colourless world where we all liked exactly the same things, and there will usually be a bit of a barney on whether Trevor Macdonald deserves the status of all-time great or all-time grate-on-you. There’ll be someone else who picks a voice specifically because it has an accent – and they will look defiantly at me as if they expect I’m going to shudder with horror like an old-fashioned elocution

teacher. I remember deliberately trying to cause a stir at the first job interview I went for as a speech advisor with the BBC by telling them I thought Jonathan Ross had a brilliant voice (a man better known perhaps as Jonathan Woss), because despite his weak ‘r’, it struck me as being so energetic and full of character. On the other hand, being a product of my generation and background, I also have a lingering weakness for dignified voices like Michael Buerk or Martha Kearney. But a soft Scottish accent like Eddie Mair’s glues me to the radio. Inevitably the examples we come up with are those who have already made an impact in national network TV or radio, and those I have mentioned are for many people the voices that sum up the classic British broadcast voice of today. But we could never compile a definitive list. Broadcasting is of the moment, ephemeral, and by the time you read this book, these voices may already be broadcasting history. Already there will be an exciting new voice working its apprenticeship in local TV or entertaining listeners on hospital or student radio, which will one day muscle its way into our personal top tens. It may even be your voice.