I’m forever told that I should use my voice for things. These calls have been increased since my year in the States. I was generally on the campus radio every day in one form or another, reading the news, announcements, naming songs etc., and since coming back the UK I’ve been told by lecturers that this is one form of work I should definitely invest in.

I recently saw a very interesting BBC article about the voices of our technology. I was watching it, mainly because Jon Briggs was in it, and as the voice of Siri on my iPhone I was just trying to work out how he looked. In the video they speak to Emma Clarke, the voice of the London Underground.

After a little more digging of each of the people, it turns out that Emma Clarke has now got into producing her own voiceovers, and has her own company. I found plenty of videos of her in interviews on YouTube and she seems like a lovely, personable individual who would be willing to talk to people. She talks about how she gets emails from people in Texas about if she’s actually on the train. This is good for me, this means she actually checks her emails and responds to the public (unlike most people in the media).

So I threw a random line out there to her email address at the company (which is the principal email given on the site). I know that she must get loads of emails like this per day, but I thought I actually had something to distinguish me. I mentioned the amount of work I’ve already done and also the fact that I have been told by lecturers that Radio 4 is really something I should be looking at, among other facts about my work so far.

I still don’t know how to take her reply:

Hi Richard

Thanks for your email. As you can imagine, I get lots of requests – about 2 every day – from people asking me for advice on how to become a voiceover. I’ve written a blog that might be of use:

http://www.emmaclarke.com/blogs/2007/september/i-really-want-to-be-a-voiceover-can-you-help-me

Hope that helps! I wish you the best of luck.

Best,

Emma

Whilst this in itself is not rude, have you actually read the article that she includes?

The third and fourth paragraphs are nice, I can’t help but feel that the other few are politely telling me to get stuffed.

I think, reading between the lines, she’s politely telling me to fuck off.