Steve subscribes to several BBC podcasts - we are listening to the BBC every day in preparation for our England trip!

Today's Radio 4 - NewsPod had a story about Emma Clarke, the woman who is the voice of the London Underground Annoucements ("mind the gap").
NewsPod: 27 Nov 07
America's Middle East peace talks / 'Muhammad' the teddy bear / Political party funding / Paris riots.

On her website, www.emmaclarke.com , she recorded some joke Underground announcements. They played some of them in the story. Her website is down right now, because so many people are downloading the MP3s. The joke announcement that had me dropping my jaw was "We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loud." The spoofs were all pretty insulting, so it is only fair that they went after we Americans too.

You can hear the story now on the BBC Radio 4 website. It might not be online for long, so I am going to make an audio clip of the story. It is the last story of the 30 minute show. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/newspod/

See the complete list of Radio 4 podcasts.

We love the Friday night News Quiz.

There was a story about this on most news sites in Australia yesterday, one example:

Mind the Gap.

Some of her mock announcements were very funny, others are a matter of 'interpretation'!!

Enjoy!

{ Fixing URL - the http:// was missing and there was a space at the end - the software is very fussy about spaces }

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pauline,

quote:

The spoofs were all pretty insulting, so it is only fair that they went after we Americans too.

She was pretty insulting about London itself, which was a bit 'biting the hand that feeds you'. I thought TFL's (Transport for London, who run the Tube) response was very funny - they put out a statement, the gist of which was that 'TFL announce that there will be delays in renewing Ms Clarke's contract' ie she was fired !

She had such a gentle, calm voice - bit at variance with her sense of humour.

Her site is working again. Here is the link to the spoof announcements.

Well, apparently Emma Clarke overstepped her bounds - and has now been fired by London Transport, per this news report. Though it seems her firing was due more to comments she made in an interview about the poor quality of the tube itself, rather than her parodies.

Judy