More hilarity from the studio

An unusual circumstance in the recording booth last week - we actually got a brand new, never-been-seen before script to read. Ordinarily, the major threat to our sanity during these marathon taping sessions is that we are doing the same tired old (Chinglish-ridden) dialogues - with just very slight variations, here and there - again and again and again and again and again.

It's exciting, refreshing to be given some novel material once in a while. But also a little wrong-footing - the 'comfort zone', the ability to 'do it in your sleep' is suddenly gone.

On this occasion - also somewhat unusually - my recording partner, Dishy Debs, and I got to read an entire Business English book from start to finish: a satisfying sense of completion that we are generally denied. And so, for once, we were really able to start enjoying the quite well-developed linking storyline about the lead character: an American manager posted to Britain, a single father bringing up a young daughter, the emerging romantic tension between him and his vivacious young nanny/housekeeper.

Now, one of the big problems with this work is that it is all done on a very tight schedule: you don't have any time for such wasteful nonsense as pre-reading and script-editing and getting in character. Oh no, you have to sight-read. We get used to this. We develop standard ways of differentiating our voice - just a little - when we suddenly discover a second (and sometimes even a third) character of our gender in a dialogue. (Children are the worst: my voice is too deep to play 9-year-olds - but sometimes I have to try!)

With this book, however, there were several dialogues with 3, 4, and even 5 characters of the same gender. Some of them were recurring characters throughout the book (I don't think Debs and I even tried to be very consistent in our voice characterisations for most of them). We had no option but to go into regional accents. Debs has a pretty good 'ooh-aaah-m'dear' West Country burr, so most of the minor characters ended up sounding like denizens of darkest Zummerzet. Almost unconsciously, I followed suit. Just for variety, we threw in a bit of Welsh, Brummie, Scouse, Scots and Cockney as well. Half-way through the book, we discovered the main story was set in Manchester - the one accent neither of us could even make a stab at!

Oh well, nobody really cares.

The pièce de résistance, though, came after 4 hours in the booth: in the final chapter (dashing single dad having belatedly confessed his crush on the nanny and proposed to her) there was a wedding - with a cast of thousands. Well, a dozen or so, anyway. Another volley of accents from a tea-room in Yeovil. And I got to read extended excerpts from the marriage ceremony - AS A VICAR.

What larks! Talk about ambitions you didn't even know you had!

I did go for the effete, worldweary, sing-song voice stereotypically used for English vicars (what else was left to me??). It was only with difficulty that I restrained myself from adopting the extravagant speech impediment of Peter Cook's frail Archbishop in 'The Princess Bride' - "Mawwidge...."