p2pnet - rss feed: Underground Emma kicked off the Tube
p2pnet news | Music:- “Hi - thanks for stopping by.
“Unfortunately, my site is currently overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to download MP3s of my spoof Tube announcements.
“Please check back in a day or so. Thanks, Emma.”
Emma is Emma Clarke is the voice behind announcement on England’s London Underground, aka The Tube.
She was sacked after allegedly saying London’s transport services were “dreadful” in a newspaper story.
But possibly more to the point, Emma has a wicked sense of humour and also posted a series of spoof messages on her site, among therm:
We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.
And >>>
Here we are crammed into another sweaty Tube carriage … If you’re a female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He’s probably not had sex for months.
Says her web page - or, rather, it said before, it was swamped.
It says Emma began voicing for the London Underground in 1999, “after being selected from a range of different voices by focus groups in London”.
Each voice was given a code name and Emma’s was Marilyn, “perhaps after Marilyn Monroe, who knows?”
According to Emma: “I can do a passable impression of Marilyn Monroe performing Happy Birthday Mr President - in fact, if I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked to do that I’d be a very happy woman - but, apart from that, I quite honestly sound nothing like her!”
But, says her site, “the code name inspired the press,” and, after she was selected as the voice of the London Underground, “the London Evening Standard ran a story detailing how Marilyn Monroe would now accompany commuters on the tube to work!”
She used to do the voices for almost all of the Tube lines, “pretty much everything except the Jubilee Line, the Northern Line and Docklands Light Railway, she says, adding her ‘underground’ style is very different from either her ‘real voice’ or her other voiceover work.
“Speech has to be much, much slower and clearer because of surrounding noise and so that non-English tourists can easily hear what’s being said,” she states.
Most of Emma’s work is recorded in her own studio at home, but the London Underground announcements are done in London and the voice files are processed in Denmark before being loaded on the Tube trains.
“London Underground is the only transport system for which Emma provides the announcements.” adds her site.
Clarke, 36, from Altrincham, Cheshire, “apparently said that while living in Highgate, North London, she used to take the Tube every day, but had refused to use it any longer because it was ‘dreadful’,” says the Times Online.
“Speaking to The Times, she said that the comments had been taken out of context. ‘I did not say that the Northern Line was dreadful. I did say it’s a challenging line. What I did say was dreadful was the thought of being in a Tube train listening to my own voice’.”
Also See:
Times Online - How Tube announcer lost her platform, November 27, 2007
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