The Times, January 31, 1990, by Lisa O'Kelly
"Commercially speaking"
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Even the best-known actors will now do the highly profitable 
advertising voice-over.

Just over a year ago, a little-known actor with the 
improbable name of Stephan de Montaignac (stage name, 
Stephen Chase), spied a gap in the market. Like him, many of 
his friends were keen to supplement their income by doing 
voice-overs, but unsure about how to find work. On a hunch 
he set up Roobarb, an agency specializing in voice-overs, 
and now does a roaring trade with such names as Rula Lenska, 
Gareth Hunt, Kate O'Mara, Michael Aspel, Peter Jeffrey and 
Julie Dawn Cole on his books.

Most actors use voice-over agencies in addition to their 
existing agencies. "Voice-overs are booked at short notice, 
often for the next day," explained de Montaignac. "It's 
fast-moving, so you need someone working on it full-time."

A crop of similar companies has since sprung up Voices, 
Castaway, Evans O'Brien and the women-only outfit, 
Speakeasy, to name a few and business is booming. "Voice-
overs have come out of the closet," says Saatchi & 
Saatchi's casting director, Louise Fennimore. "The better-
known actors and actresses used to be snooty about 
commercials, but now the Tom Contis, Michael Gambons and 
Judi Denches are all interested."

Agencies choose recognizable voices not for a particular 
part but to portray a type Penelope Keith for the bossy 
schoolmistress, Simon Cadell for a hapless, confused 
character.

There has always been a handful of serious actors who saw 
the sense in earning money through advertising Orson Welles 
had a long-running contract with Carlsberg, and Peter 
Sellers recorded ads for PG Tips and Kennomeat dog food. 
Others such as Ian Holm, John Hurt and Geoffrey Palmer have 
never baulked at putting their voices to commercial use. But 
they were always exceptions to the rule. 

Now, if you spend an evening in front of the television, you 
may hear Conti (British Airways), Gambon (Allied Dunbar) and 
Dench (Sheba cat food), joined by Joss Ackland, Jane Asher, 
Sir Michael Hordern, Tim Pigott-Smith, Peter Egan, and the 
ubiquitous Stephen Fry. Lennie Henry, Mel Smith and Griff 
Rhys Jones should also pop up at least once or twice. Many 
of the same performers also make radio ads.

De Montaignac attributes the growing popularity of voice-
overs to the diminishing amount of television acting work 
available. "Four or five years ago there used to be plenty 
of television drama. Now television relies so heavily on 
American and Australian imports, repeats and game shows, 
that actors have had to broaden their horizons."

But it is also bound up with improved standards of UK 
advertising in the 1980s. Mandy Wheeler, a radio commercials 
producer, says: "Ad agencies have thankfully moved away 
from the hard-sell, very authoritative, 'dark brown' voice-
over of the Seventies, which always seemed to be done by 
Patrick Allen (who set up his own agency to market himself). 
They have also stopped using the patronizing soft-sell, with 
the sing-song voice and friendly inflections."

Wheeler believes the quality of scripts in radio advertising 
in particular has improved, as more advertisers use it as an 
economic alternative to television. In a recession-hit 
market, revenue for the medium grew by 25 per cent to £104 
million in the first nine months of 1989, with forecasts of 
up to £140 million for the full year.

Peter Jeffrey, star of BBC1's drama series *Chelworth* last 
summer and currently the voice in television and radio 
commercials for KP Nuts, Citroen and Boots, says: "These 
days, voice-overs are like an extension of radio drama.  But 
it's a challenge of a different sort. You might be playing a 
pimple or a flat tyre, which is much harder than it 
sounds."

Like Jeffrey, actor Tony Head, who plays the male half of 
the Gold Blend coffee couple and records an average of four 
voice-overs a week, including corporate videos, finds the 
split-second timing required a pleasing exercise in 
precision. "It's quite daunting," Head says. "You get 30 
seconds to create a character who must mention the product's 
name at least twice, while still sounding natural. If you 
take 31 seconds, it's no good."

But even more attractive is the money. Equity rates for 
voice-overs seem modest:  £57.50 an hour for television 
commercials and £60 an hour for radio. In reality, the 
standard rate is between £80 and £150 an hour, depending on 
who you are, but the real  rewards lie in the repeat fees, 
which can run into several thousand pounds for an  on-
running, nationally networked television campaign and 
several hundreds for radio.



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