Small Man in a Book (30 page)

In my heyday, at the height of my powers, the mid-nineties onwards, I must have recorded zillions of commercial voice-overs. It would be silly to list them. But if I did they would include Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, British Home Stores, Tesco, McDonald’s, Tango, Toilet Duck, Nivea, the
Sunday Times
, the
Sun
,
Daily Mail
, Subway, Domino’s, Nationwide, British Gas, Sky, ITV, Wild Bean Café, Kit Kat, Hula Hoops, The TrainLine, Bounty, Renault, Ford, Fairy, Crunchy Nut, Philadelphia, Raleigh and Pot Noodle.

I was a voice-over machine.

In addition to the commercials, I also found work lending my manly tones whenever a voice was needed. Had you visited Beaulieu Motor Museum in the nineties, you may well have heard me telling you all about the history of motoring. I did a similar thing for a canal museum, and also provided voices for prank phone calls of the sort found advertised in the back pages of lads’ mags (a tenuous arrangement with a chap in Wales, for which I was never paid).

Another area to offer me gainful employment at this time was the relatively new world of computer games. While I love computers and all things Mac (I’m looking at a lovely MacBook Air right now), I’ve never really been a big fan of games, though that hasn’t stopped me adding my voice to them when the opportunity arose.

Discworld
was based on the hugely popular books of the same name by the hugely popular Sir Terry Pratchett. The lead role of Rincewind was voiced by Eric Idle, and I played an assortment of other characters. It was deemed a success, and so a few years later I was asked to do a follow-up,
Discworld Noir
, this time playing the lead character Lewton and many, many, many others.

Voicing video games sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun, doesn’t it? It isn’t. Perhaps, if you’re an aficionado of the games, it can be quite pleasurable. But, to the disinterested money-motivated layman like myself, it’s far from a walk in the park. Number one, in common with most animation, you record your bits in isolation, alone in a little booth. My excitement at the prospect of meeting a real-live Python was a little premature; at no point did I come within ten miles of Eric Idle. I would go on to eventually meet one member of
Monty Python
some years later at an awards do, when the excellent Michael Palin spotted me and made my night by saying, ‘Oh, if you’re here, it’ll be good!’

The second problem with recording voices for video games is the size of the scripts. In my experience, video-game scripts are almost unbelievably large – huge, slab-like, telephone-directory-dwarfing tomes that take several lifetimes to read, let alone perform. Something like
Discworld
, set in a bizarre universe from the imagination of Terry Pratchett, is full of the most peculiar lines of dialogue.

‘Behold, the goram-jewelled anti-husk of Grint, once belonging to Aaangrin, son of Pottywretch and Nim. See how it glistens under the shimmering light of our three moons. Eh, Lolfop?’

The script didn’t actually say that, but it might as well have done; in fact, reading it back, I think it’s quite good. I might give it a go myself.

From the voice artist’s point of view, the main problem with the scripts is that, given the nature of game play, they have to contain a ridiculous number of options and reactions for and to whatever the pale, lank-haired, social-skills-lacking player does. This leaves the voice artist stranded for hours in his padded cell delivering mind-crushingly dull variations on a theme, so as to be able to deal with whatever the player chooses to do.

‘So, you’ve opened the cursed casket of Minge!’

‘Ooh! You haven’t opened the cursed casket of Minge!’

‘Why haven’t you opened the cursed casket of Minge?’

‘Can I interest you in the cursed casket of Minge?’

‘Behold, the cursed casket of Minge!’

‘What’s that? It looks like the cursed casket of Minge!’

‘Hmm, a cursed casket … I wonder where it’s from?’

‘If you like caskets and you like Minge, you’ll love …’

It feels as though I spent years recording the
Discworld
games, though in reality it was probably just a week or so. I believe they were successful, and the people at the games company couldn’t have been nicer, but I think it’s safe to say they’re probably my last attempt at the oeuvre.

I believe it was Sean Connery who said, ‘Never say never again.’

He obviously wasn’t referring to voicing video games.

I was becoming a regular fixture at the more lucrative voice-over studios scattered around Soho. This small area of London’s West End contains a mind-boggling number of recording studios and at my busiest I would spend whole days schlepping from one to another, from Zoo on Wardour Street to Jungle on Dean Street, up to Saunders & Gordon on Gresse Street then across to the Bridge on Great Marlborough Street, finishing off at the Tape Gallery on Lexington Street. The studios were all in competition, not just in having the best technical equipment and engineers but, more importantly to me, in how luxurious they could make their reception areas. There would always be plush sofas, with acres of magazines and drinks being offered on arrival, and most also had overflowing bowls of sweets and chocolates that were constantly being refilled. I got to know the girls on reception at all these places; we would chat while I stuffed my face with sugary delights. Those sweets that wouldn’t fit in my mouth would always find a temporary home in my pockets.

There would be gaps in between bookings, sometimes of several hours, and I soon became a leading authority on the fine art of killing time. My destination of choice would be HMV on Oxford Street, their huge store near the top of Poland Street, where I could easily while away several eternities, browsing through the CDs, the books and the videos. I remember something the broadcaster Danny Baker once said about record shops, and how he was quite happy to look at records he already owned. I understood that completely; it was like checking in on old friends and seeing how they were doing. I had a little routine.

On the ground floor, I’d visit Elvis, Bruce, James (Taylor) and Paul (Simon). The Bruce section rarely had anything new to offer in those days, maybe a Japanese CD EP with an odd track listing. The same was true of James Taylor and Paul Simon, but the Elvis section was always a potential treasure chest that might throw up all manner of curios (although even the most fervent fan would have to concede that, at the end of the day, he was unlikely to have recorded any new material – it was always essentially old Coke in new cans). But, ‘Hey, now,’ as Hank Kingsley once said to Larry Sanders, ‘that’s good enough for me!’

After I’d satisfied myself that the ground floor had no more to offer I would make my way to the escalator and head upstairs, maybe pausing on the way to wave to Rod (Stewart, who else?) and Billy (Joel). Oh, there’s Barbra Streisand – sorry, Barbra, didn’t see you there. Upstairs was video, and DVD. I spent absolutely acres of time here looking for Pacino films, or Simon and Garfunkel television specials that might feature the brilliant Charles Grodin. If I’m being horribly honest, I also used to loiter by the comedy section and look to see where I’d live, if I ever managed to get a DVD out. It was a nice neighbourhood, not far from
Blackadder
, Bill Cosby and Billy Connolly. I would picture my face staring out from the racks of the people who had already made it. Coming back to reality, I’d search for Marlon Brando or Richard Burton movies and odd videos collating Elvis’s 1950s spots on the Ed Sullivan or Milton Berle shows. These were the dark days before the instant access of YouTube; the vintage clips still had great rarity value, which could give their lucky discoverer a sense of Indiana Jones-like adventure.

I would usually have to buy something, anything, just to have the satisfaction of going up to the till and walking away with an item in a bag, which would then be carried down to the basement and the exotic, subterranean world of film soundtracks, opera, classical and jazz. The soundtracks were always a good place to kill a few hours, hunting for films remembered from childhood. I would search out old James Bond – Marvin Hamlisch’s
Bond ’77
, the soundtrack of
The Spy Who Loved Me
, seen at the Royal Playhouse in Tenby that titular year – or John Barry’s score for the rarely celebrated Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour weepie
Somewhere in Time
. I’d watched it on the television as a teenager and been left in floods of tears. I could get it now on DVD, but I’d be afraid to spoil my memory of it as being an excellent film (it’s noticeably absent from the endless lists of the ‘100 Greatest Movies’ compiled by busy editors to fill their magazines and papers).

It was on this basement level of HMV that I’d find a rotating stand of specialist magazines: Sinatra fanzines; glossy spreads devoted to Barbra Streisand; and, best of all, a little publication called
Elvis: The Man and His Music
. This came out quarterly, I think, and although I would sometimes splash out and buy it, more often than not I would just stand there for as long as it took to read from cover to cover.

My departure from the store would always include a forlorn glance towards classical and jazz, and a moment’s wondering if I would ever be sophisticated enough to walk amongst the serious-looking types browsing the Shostakovich and Coltrane. I have since come to appreciate both these art forms, but back in my voice-over days they were still another country to me. While at school in Porthcawl I had once gone to the home of a friend, Jason Chess, a very bright, academically gifted boy. He lived in Cornelly, just west of Porthcawl, and I was shocked on entering his bedroom for the first time to find his shelves lined with classical and opera records – no space here for my buddies Bruce and Rod, not even Elvis. He’d gone straight to sophistication, not passing ‘Go’ yet still managing to pick up £200 on the way.

We were once together in his car, an orange Volkswagen Beetle, when he was giving me a lift back to Port Talbot. Bruce came on the radio, singing ‘I’m Goin’ Down’ from
Born in the USA
. If you’re yet to familiarize yourself with the song, a lot of it is taken up with the mantra:

I’m goin’ down, down, down, down,

I’m goin’ down, down, down, down,

I’m goin’ down, down, down, down,

I’m goin’ down, down, down, down …

Jason said nothing at first, staring intently at the radio. After a perfect pause, he raised a quizzical eyebrow and said, ‘Well, he’s going down …’

He’s now a lawyer.

15

In 1994, although the voice-overs were flourishing, my acting career had stalled. With so much of my CV taken up with presenting, corporate and voice work, it was almost impossible to be taken seriously by any casting director of note. In desperation I asked my old friend Dougray Scott if he would mention me to anyone who might be able to help. Within days he had managed to arrange a meeting with Mary Selway, one of, if not
the
biggest casting director in Britain. She had cast, amongst others,
Raiders of the Lost Ark
,
Return of the Jedi
and
Out of Africa
. When I went in to see her she was working on the Richard Gere/Sean Connery Arthurian adventure
First Knight
.

I sat down in her office at Twickenham Film Studios and tried to look like a film star, struggling to contain my nerves in the presence of this legendary and rather formidable woman. We chatted for a bit about Dougray, casually singing his praises as I smiled in a relaxed fashion. Inside, I was shouting,
Give me a part in this film!
She looked through the casting breakdown, a document detailing the roles in the film that still needed filling, before glancing back at me.

‘Now, then,’ she said to her assistant, ‘what have we got for Rob? A marauder?’

I liked this. I’d never thought of myself as a marauder but Mary had obviously seen something in me, a hint of the uncaring, brutal savage that other, less imaginative casting people had failed to spot. I was going to be a marauder. How exciting! Her assistant looked unsure, though, and studied my CV with a furrowed brow before turning back to Mary and reminding her of my limitations.

‘Five foot seven?’ she said, with a degree of concern, perhaps even sympathy, in her voice.

‘Mmm …’ purred Mary.

I sat up as straight as I could in the chair.

‘What about a villager?’ suggested her assistant.

There followed a moment or two during which it was evidently decided that there was no height bar when it came to villagers, and so I was handed a sheet of paper on which were printed some lines belonging to First Villager. This, again, was a good thing; he wasn’t Second or Third Villager, he was First Villager, the King of the Villagers, the focal point of village life, the big cheese of the community, possibly even Chair of the Neighbourhood Watch.