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Let me tell you a story...

 SO, perhaps you're wondering how and why I got into doing voiceovers and performance in the first place. Or maybe I just feel the need to confess my sins or something. Anyway, it goes like this...

I studied Drama and English Literature at Bangor University back in the 80s - well, to be honest, I probably studied the insides of bars, parties and the ceilings of other people's bedrooms a little more than I did my academic work, but still - in 1989, I left university, proudly clutching my BA (Joint Hons).

And that's where everything, as they say,..crashed to a standstill. I didn't actually know what I was doing with my life, what I wanted to do (or could afford to do), where I was going - nothing. And nowhere and nothing was my precise destination for quite some time, until, that is, I saw a fateful advert in a newspaper that propelled me into the glamorous world of TEFL. And it was through that that I got my first experience of VO.

Picture me, then, in a recording studio just off Taksim in Istanbul in late '97. A publisher of English Language textbooks (called FONO) needed some British voices, and someone had suggested me. I though it might be interesting, so off I went. It was a solid few hours of recording, and all a little dull at first: I had to say things like 'It is cold today. What is the time? It is half past ten? Where is my blue pen? It is on the table', and so on and so forth - all pretty standard teaching fare, and the kind of phrases that get taught to weary schoolchildren around the world.

But then, for reasons best known to the publisher and author, the sentences began to get a little,well, weird. It started with:

'Is it a chair or a bicycle? It IS a bicycle?'

then:

'Is it a photograph or a blackboard? It IS a BLACKBOARD'

and then:

'Is it a spoon or a fish? It IS a FISH'

, accompanied by a badly-drawn cartoon of a fish. It took me several minutes to get through that one as I was laughing so hard. I finally worked out the spoon/fish conundrum and why it was in the text, but that's one for my language learning journal. 

Anyway, fast-forward many years to 2015, and you find me adrift from the realms of employment, having been suddenly made redundant due to various shenanigans at the Further Education college where I'd been working. I was looking around for new work, and I began to wonder whether doing voiceovers might be worth a go. I mulled it for quite a while, but then eventually bought a cheap USB mic, made my own pop shield, and started touting for business on freelance websites. Amazingly, I found bits of work fairly quickly - nothing flashy, and nothing offering much money, but it was a start. I then lucked out with a youtube producer, which lead to me getting a PC upgrade and a better mic (An AT2020 USB+, which is a perfectly good mic and still my backup), and this then lead to getting more work, a better showreel, and an improved studio space, and it's slowly increased from there. 

I can't say that I make my living entirely from VO - that would be fantastic. In fact, I had high hopes for 2020, but then, of course, COVID hit, and it's meant I haven't been as busy. I've still been working, just not as much - still. there's hope for the future.

As for the theatre and film work - well, that's a story for another day.

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