The first reaction to the news that BT are looking for a replacement voice for the speaking clock was surprise that it still exists. In our time-obsessed world of mobiles and iPads, are there really people who need to call 123 to get the time? Well, yes, there are – 12 million of them a year; down from 70 million a decade ago but still a sizeable chunk of the population. “Clocks on computers are not as accurate as people think,” explains David Hay, head of BT heritage and archives. Which is where the speaking clock, accurate to five-thousandths of a second, comes in, with demand peaking on New Year’s Eve and Remembrance Sunday, when exactitude is everything.
There have been four voices in the speaking clock’s 80-year history: Jane Cain (1936-63); Pat Simmons (1963-85); Brian Cobby (1985-2007); and, since 2007, Sara Mendes da Costa. The first three were Post Office or BT employees, chosen in an internal competition. Mendes da Costa was selected in a public competition, and the latter model will again be followed, with BT linking up with The One Show to find the next voice, which will be revealed in November.
Cain and Simmons had wonderfully clipped, cut-glass accents. Hay says telephone operators in the 1930s and 40s were rigorously trained in enunciation; Cain and Simmons make the Queen sound common. Simmons’s voice, which was used in the era when the telephone was becoming universal and when the number of calls to the speaking clock ran into hundreds of millions, is preserved on a separate service run by another company.
Cobby’s voice had more warmth – the characteristic BT now places first among the qualities it is looking for. He had been an actor before he joined BT, and Hay calls his voice “mellifluous”. The story goes that his voice was so reassuring that elderly ladies liked to ring the speaking clock last thing at night. Mendes da Costa has that warmth, too, as well as clarity and classlessness.
So, what now? “We have no preconceived ideas,” says Hay, who is on the panel that will select the winning voice. “Personally, I really liked the last two voices and will be looking for that kind of warmth.” Surely it’s time for a northern voice? “It could be northern, Scottish, Welsh, Irish – accent shouldn’t be a bar,” he says. But you wonder if the panel choosing the voice would make that leap. Hay says the BBC now permit – indeed positively encourage – regional accents, but that’s as part of a mix of voices. Here they have to choose a single voice to speak for (and to) the nation.
And the rewards for the winner? Cain left the Post Office, went on to the stage and made a film (now sadly lost); Simmons, who was unmarried, received numerous offers of marriage on the strength of her enunciation and now has her slice of immortality; Cobby retired from BT and resumed his acting career on the strength of his new-found fame; and Mendes da Costa does voiceover work and has just published a novel. The next voice will probably be a shoo-in for Strictly Come Dancing or Celebrity Big Brother. If they have time, of course.
