Good to be back in the booth at IMG narrating the latest episode of the long-running hit documentary series The Spirit of Yachting for BBC/Sky. This episode featured the spectacular Rolex Middle Sea Race round the island of Sicily and then on to Malta, due for broadcast Sat 23rd November.
And finally… after the aborted trailer campaigns for No Time to Die in March and November 2020 it was third time lucky with the movie finally opening to rave reviews last week. This is one of my favourite radio spots this time round, featuring the haunting theme song by Billie Eilish. Congrats to all at Universal and Chinagraph London and thanks for asking me to voice the campaign in each of its iterations.
A few more mics than usual… Recording in the beautiful Menuhin Hall with pianist Gamal Khamis for our forthcoming CD release by SOMM Recordings of works for speaker and piano by Richard Strauss, including his setting of Tennyson’s epic poem Enoch Arden which made such an impact with audiences recently at London's Jermyn Street Theatre and the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. An actor's life is never dull...
I was pleased to play the character of the devious Roman politician Malleolus in this brilliant and intriguing new narrative quest game set in Ancient Rome 2,000 years ago. The design and storylining from developers Modern Storytellers is superb and has deservedly picked up a string of rave reviews from industry journals and bloggers. I’m pleased to say the voice acting gets quite a few likes too!
I was pleased to lend my voice recently to another stylish brand film for AEG to run alongside our recent TV commercial campaign.
Gamal Khamis and I were delighted to appear on BBC Radio 3’s flagship In Tune programme talking to host Sean Rafferty and performing extracts from our fothcoming Love and War Trilogy at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre on Saturday July 10th. Here’s the full interview.
I was pleased to be interviewed recently along with recital partner Gamal Khamis about our forthcoming Love and War Trilogy at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre on Sat 10th July. Tickets available in theatre and online.
One actor. One pianist. Three acclaimed shows all on one day. I am delighted to be performing The Love and War Trilogy with my regular recital partner Gamal Khamis live on stage and online on Saturday 10th July as part of Jermyn Street Theatre's re-opening #jstfootprintsfestival. We will perform our shows Never Such Innocence, Odyssey and Enoch Arden across one afternoon and evening. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased for individual shows or the complete trilogy, either live (25 tickets available per show) or live-streamed. Full booking info: www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/the-love-and-war-trilogy/
And finally… my 2021 v/o demo is ready, including selections of recent commercial, trailer & promo work. In a sign of how rarely any of us ever gets out these days every single one of these spots was recorded remotely from my own studio working with producers in the UK, US and Europe. NB The eagle-eyed will spot that No Time to Die was not in fact in cinemas last April 2nd... nor last November 12th... nor any of the other times we recorded trailers for it. I lost count, but one lives in hope :)
Well, it’s always nice to share a bit of screen time with a sporting superstar, if only in a virtual sense. The amazing Rory McIlroy is still only 31 but seems to have the world at his feet. Here he is in this very nice spot for Golf Pass, which I was pleased to lend my voice to.
It’s hard to recall that barely more than a year ago a hot topic of debate in the movie industry was whether films launched straight to streaming with only minimal exposure in cinemas should be eligible for major awards. Now it's a lifeline, especially for smaller scale movies like To Olivia, a quiet gem which tells the story of Roald Dahl and his wife the movie star Patricia Neal dealing with the loss of their daughter, with lovely performances by Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes. This is one of the radio spots from the trailer campaign I’ve been working on for Sky Cinema with Empire Design.
There’s been some really interesting games work coming into the studio recently. This is an intro feature I voiced for Iron Harvest from King-Art Games, a really inventive real-time strategy game set in the alternate reality of 1920+, just after the end of the Great War. Some amazingly inventive stuff here...
I wasn’t too aware of this show from the Marvel universe until Disney/Fox asked me to do the trailers for the new Season 7 (so, ehem, just a bit of catching up to do) but it’s really entertaining. Pleased to be on board.
One for the petrol heads… Like nearly all sports during the pandemic, motor racing has largely been either suspended or only able to operate behind closed doors. This was an appropriately contemplative and nicely poetic film produced for regular client Falken Racing about the events of 2020, for which I was pleased to add the narration.
I was delighted to contribute some more readings to Laura Shavin’s excellent podcast series the Offcuts Drawer, in which she interviews established writers and gets them to talk about some of their work which never ended up being used. This episode featured The Guardian’s foreign correspondent Luke Harding and was a fascinating insight into his experiences. The full episode is here and here I am reading an unpublished extract from Luke’s notebook about an unexpected meeting with the Taliban.
I am delighted to be giving a special live-streamed solo performance, together with the amazing classical pianist Gamal Khamis, of Tennyson's deeply touching narrative epic poem Enoch Arden, as set to music by Richard Strauss for speaker and piano. It's on Sunday 8th November at 4pm and viewable free of charge via www.st-marys-perivale.org.uk (and online afterwards) and lasts about an hour. With words and music of haunting beauty, Enoch Arden is a hidden gem of the romantic repertoire and a masterwork of the now almost lost genre of musical melodrama.
Great to welcome old chum Mel Giedroyc to the studio this week to record the audio version of her forthcoming debut novel The Best Things. As you’d expect for such a consummate comic actor it’s drop dead hilarious and full of great gags and great characters. It’s due for publication in April 2021 and I’m confidently predicting it should be one of the year’s publishing sensations.
I was pleased to be asked to add my voice to this new campaign for AEG and it was interesting how it came about. My company CKUK Media was originally helping cast the spots and AEG’s brief was that they wanted the voice to be German-accented English. We know some great German voice actors and submitted two rounds of auditions to the client but nothing quite seemed to be working, so as a wild card in the second batch I threw in one of my own with a German accent. That’s the one the client chose without realising it was me, then when they did realise decided to get me to do it without any accent after all. Which just goes to show… I’m not sure what, except that it’s often worth persevering even in the face of unlikely odds!
My kids always told me my voice was too scary when I read them bedtime stories so they think it’s hilarious that I’m doing trailers for Disney movies. That’ll teach them! Here’s one of the recent ones
Just before lockdown I was honoured to be invited to voice an international campaign for The Turkish Ministry of Culture. We recorded fifteen separate spots, each highlighting a different archeological site in Turkey. One can only hope that we’ll all be able to travel to such beautiful and remarkable places again soon…
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