The voice of the London Underground
When you travel on the London Underground, you’re more than likely to hear the pleasant recorded voice of a woman announcing various stops and other various things on the trains.
Her name is Emma Clarke, and she was chosen out of a wide pool of applicants for the job. (The public could hear all of the applicants’ try-out tapes online.) Her voice is clear and hopefully makes traveling the Underground a lot better than other cities that rely on train operators to make the announcements. I remember traveling on the “El” in Chicago a number of years ago and couldn’t understand a word the operator said… and they were just a few feet away from me!
Why do I mention this now? Well, I just recently found some funny spoof Tube announcements that she recorded and put up on her website. They’re things she… well… she probably wish she could say on the Tube.
These are a few of my favourites: (All links are MP3 files)
Enjoy!
Photo from Flickr.
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POSTED IN: Just a Little Bit Weird - Fun & Quirky Places, Miscellaneous, People - Interesting Local People
3 opinions for The voice of the London Underground
Jon - The DC Traveler
Nov 22, 2007 at 1:21 am
I love the way she says “Mind the gap.”
I grew up in Chicago and the PA system was the worst (totally worthless). In the past couple years, most Chicago trains were retrofitted with new PAs.
Mary Yoleese
Nov 24, 2007 at 5:03 am
I also grew up in NYC and Chicago. Both the El and the subway have two of the worst public address and in-train address sytems in existence. But they are getting better.
And now that I live here in London, I can say that the system here is loads better than those American ones, and the one in Moscow (and perhaps a tie with Tokyo.)
Jed
Nov 24, 2007 at 11:34 am
Hi, Jon and Mary.
I recently traveled to both NYC and DC, and while each of them have their nice parts (NYC = trains run very frequently, DC = Large, clean trains), I really do enjoy the whole London system. Well… except for when 60000+ football fans descend onto one station at the same time as evening rush hour, but that’s another thing entirely!
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