Tom, now starring on hit comedy Little Britain, said: "I'll be bringing good news to people - whether it's a cheeky message, a birthday greeting or just a quick hello." The 70s Time Lord spent 11 days recording every sound in the English language.
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According to a press release from BT Telecom, Tom Baker on Friday became the voice of BT Text, "a new service which lets people send and receive text messages on their home phone. From today, every text message sent to a landline will be delivered as a spoken message by Tom, narrator of the hit comedy Little Britain. Former Dr Who Tom was chosen as the voice of BT Text for his instantly recognisable voice. In a recent poll of celebrity voices, Tom was voted the fourth most recognisable voice in the UK, behind only the Queen, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. Gavin Patterson, BT group managing director, Consumer, said: 'As one of our great British icons, Tom appeals across the generations, for his role as the fourth Dr Who, more recently as the narrator of Little Britain and as Donald McDonald in Monarch of the Glen. He's the perfect choice to be the new voice of text, showing everyone – young and old – how easy and fun it is to send and receive texts on your home phone.' Tom Baker said: 'It's a big responsibility to be Britain's voice of text. What appeals to me most is the thought that I will be bringing good news to people whether it is a cheeky message, a Birthday greeting or just a quick hello. Whatever it is, hopefully my voice will bring a smile to people's faces.' It took about five months to produce the voice from start to finish, with Tom spending a total of 11 days recording every single sound in the English language. It was not a simple case of reading out the dictionary from A-Z. Instead, Tom had to record 11,593 phrases, which covered every single sound in the English language in each of their different contexts. These were then broken down into combinations of sounds that could be separated and reassembled by computer to make new words following the rules of English pronunciation – similar to the way children are taught to read. This means there is no limit to the words the voice can say, even rude ones. It has also been programmed to recognise abbreviations and even text speak such as GR8, CUL8R and 'smilies' like :-) . You could even get Tom to blow kisses to your loved one on Valentine's Day. Text 'xx' and Tom Baker's voice will say 'kiss, kiss' or four or more x's and he'll say 'lots of kisses'. ... Tom will be the voice of BT Text for a limited period of three months." More details about the service are at BT's Celebrity Voice website.
[Also reported in the Mirror, the Brand Republic, Pocket Lint, icWales Network, Daily Record, Digital Spy.]
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Being the voice of text appeals to me because ... Everybody wants to give good news. All my life I wanted to. And text is largely good news and making people happy.
If I wasn't talking to you right now I'd be ... Telling lies to someone else.
A phrase I use far too often is ... "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be." I say it often to my wife who is a good deal younger than me, but she doesn't often see the joke.
I wish people would take more notice of ... Where their dogs shit. Where I live in Toulouse it's as if they all play hopscotch. I love dogs but I hate some of the people who have them.
The most surprising thing that ever happened to me ... Was BT choosing me to be their voice. I'm going to talk to millions of people. I'm so reassuring; I keep sending myself messages.
I'm not a politician but ... I adore political scandal and to see some wretched would-be coming adrift. I love Charles Kennedy. The next time I see him I'm going to buy him a drink. The next time I see Simon Hughes I'm going to squeeze his leg. Huhne, I'm not going to go near.
The ideal night out is ... A night in. Bed is actually, I think, my second favourite place.
A common misperception of me is ... That I'm difficult. I'm not.
I'm good at ... Persuading people they need me but I'm very bad at being needed.
In moments of weakness ... I tell the truth to disarm criticism. People who've done dreadful things plead guilty in the hope they will get it over with.
In a truer life, I would have been a ... Good waiter. Not as good as Edward Fox in Shaw's You Never Can Tell. It would be funny if I worked in an Indian.
In a nutshell, my philosophy is ... The living are just the dead on holiday.
brief rumble with tom baker
Tim de Lisle Wednesday February 1, 2006 The Guardian
Tom Baker's voice is rich, dark and traditional, a great big slice of fruitcake soaked in molasses. And it has slowly turned into a national treasure. The Former Dr Who has become The Voice of Little Britain, and now he's going to play you and me. Send a text to a BT landline and your words will be spoken by a disembodied Baker. BT chose him for his broad appeal; at 72, he is the young person's old person. I call him to talk voices. His seems to have become an icon. "Well, yeah," he booms, " but that's because of comedy, isn't it? It's because of Little Britain. Advertising people are very reassured if you've been in something that has done well with the young. Yesterday I was doing McDonald's hamburgers!" Telephone voices tend to be cool, clinical and female. Not this one. "You wouldn't want a freezing, robotic voice," he thunders. "I had thousands of nonsensical phrases to read out, and I read them very warmly. Most text messages are passionate or funny, and some, of course, are utterly treacherous or wicked. We don't want any indifference! Wickedness is marvellously expressed when it's warm." Voiceovers have been Baker's constant in a hot-and-cold career. After making his name as Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra in 1971 (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), Baker was working on a building site before landing Dr Who. His first voiceover came along in 1973. "I was filling in because they couldn't get someone well-known. It was for [his voice darkens] Noir, the after-dark aftershave. They hadn't quite written it and there were a lot of people from the agency, all throwing in their threepennyworth. I was going for it, very keen. And it changed my life, because these people knew who I was, and soon I was doing Sainsbury's." I wonder what other voices he likes. "I don't have a log in my head of voices I like, I have a log of voices I don't," he rumbles, "like ... Michael Winner. When I hear his voice, I reach for my Magnum, and I'm not talking champagne." His favourite voice of all, though, is someone less well known. "Michael Jayston. He has this wonderful warmth, so you want to believe in what he says. It's a very dangerous quality, it's the great quality of seduction, which is why he works all the time. I don't see much of him now, but he once bought me a suit when we were in Hollywood and I had no money - a jumbo cord suit, a most wonderful light gold colour." In the background, Baker's mobile rings. "Hello, who's that?" he roars. "Well, piss off! No, don't leave me a message because I can't retrieve it. I've got this incredibly complicated phone that I don't know how to use." Speaking for us all instead may prove less difficult.
Tom Baker On a Phone Near You
Last Modified: 31 Jan 2006 Source: ITN
Little Britain narrator and former Dr Who star Tom Baker has been employed by BT to be the voice of text messages on UK landlines.
Tom, 72, replaces the anonymous voice now used on BT Text, the service which allows mobile text messages to be sent and received on a home phone.
He was chosen for the role because of his instantly recognisable voice.
In a recent poll of celebrity voices, his was voted the fourth most recognisable in the UK, behind the Queen, Tony Blair, and Margaret Thatcher.
Tom, who played The Doctor in Doctor Who in the 1970s, is now most famous for his idiosyncratic voice-overs on the hit comedy Little Britain.
It took British Telecom engineers five months to record and process his voice.
The actor spent a total of 11 days recording 11,593 phrases covering every single sound in the English language.
These were broken down into combinations of sounds that could be separated and reassembled by computer to make new words, following the rules of English pronunciation.
BT says there is no limit to the words Baker's voice can say - even rude ones are included.
The system can also recognise text-speak abbreviations, such as "gr8", and "cu l8r".
Type "xx" into a text message, and Tom's voice will be heard saying "kiss kiss". If there are four or more xs, the message becomes "lots of kisses".
"It's a big responsibility to be Britain's voice of text," said Tom. "What appeals to me most is the thought that I will be bringing good news to people whether it is a cheeky message, a birthday greeting, or just a quick hello. Whatever it is, hopefully my voice will bring a smile to people's faces."
Tom will lend his voice to BT Text for three months.
Last year, 82 million texts were sent each day in the UK. The Mobile Data Association expects 100 million to be sent this year.
(Liverpool Echo Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
HE'S been a monk, a merchant seaman, Dr Who and the voice of Little Britain. And now Tom Baker has added another string to his bow - by becoming the voice of BT. For the next three months, whenever you send a mobile phone text to a landline number the recipient will hear a former Doctor Who, Tom Baker, reading out your message. "I think I'm a good choice," chuckles the 72-year-old actor, who was brought up in Norris Green. "It took about 60-odd hours over 11 days to record every sound and combination in the language they need to make the service work. "In many ways it could have been a very boring job, because a lot of the stuff I was saying was I phonetic' they were looking for I sounds and not the sense. "Despite the fact it was all nonsensical, I had to read it with aplomb. "I said to the engineer: 'I don't know how I can do this.' To which he replied: 'Well, I've just heard you talking a load of rubbish in the entrance. It was fantastic' just do that.' I thought: 'Gosh, that's a sharp observation.' "It was a nice job because most of the messages that are going to go out being read by me will be rather pleasant. I'm looking forward to people in the street saying: 'I had a call from you last night!'." In a recent poll, Tom was voted as having the fourth most recognisable voice in the UK after the Queen, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. "I think I've got a quality of being friendly and persuasive," he says when asked why he's always in demand for voice-over work. "But I don't go around thinking to myself 'I've got a fab voice' or anything like that. I just have a style of approaching things which is not too serious." Tom's comedy work today is a far cry from the very serious work of being a monk. Born in Scotland Road and brough up in Norris Green, he left Liverpool at the age of 15 to spend six years training to take Holy Orders at a monastery in Jersey. "I've got such a sense of how wonderful nonsense is, because I was brought up an Irish Roman Catholic. The Irish Roman Catholics are, of course, the world's experts in utter nonsense. I got going as a liar in Liverpool by attending confession a lot as a child. "I started in about 1940, when I was six. Now, I'm sure lively things were happening in Liverpool then, but not to six-year-olds. But if I'd say, 'I haven't committed a single sin', the priest would reply, 'Pride, that's one. That's a mortal sin! Two decades of the rosary. Now get back to school on your hands and knees!'. "So, I would make up sins for him, because I thought that was the point of it." Tom decided to become an actor after completing National Service, followed by a stint as a merchant seaman, a shipping officer, a hod carrier and a plumber's mate. He landed the role of Dr Who - TV's fourth - in 1974 and went on to appear in 42 episodes. Nowadays, Tom is probably best known for his work on Little Britain. "I'm mostly employed now by the children who watched me in Doctor Who," he explains. "Matt Lucas and David Walliams chose me to be on the radio version of Little Britain seven years ago, and the idea evolved of some kind of warm-hearted, harmless, rather pompous guy, who says the most appalling things, totally unaware that he is." Despite the comedy's success, it's still his seven-year stint in the 1970s as Doctor Who that continues to be his most famous role. Even though he quit the series 25 years ago, the impact he made continues to be felt. "I'm very thrilled at the effect of that effort of mine," he says. "A man stopped me quite recently in Oxford Street. He couldn't believe it. He said: 'Tom Baker?' 'Yeah,' I replied. 'Oh,' he said, 'Tom Baker?' 'Yes!', I said, wishing he'd get on with it. Then, suddenly, I could almost see him being catapulted back to his childhood. "'When I was a kid I lived in North Wales,' he said. 'I was in a home, I was in care. Nobody wanted any of us, you know, and you made such a difference on TV on Saturday nights'. "I didn't know what to say. I tried to think of something, but he just beckoned to me to shush and then went. "It was a very, very sweet, gentle thing from him to say and it made me think about the accident of me playing a silly old alien and the effect it had on a small child who, 25 years later, would do such a thing. It was very touching." For the last three years, Tom's been living in semi-retirement with his wife near Toulouse in France. "Our house has been very beautifully restored by her," he says. "We have a courtyard and a long patio and a studio which is huge. So that's wonderful, but of course, I'm often lonely because there's no-one there except her, and she can't be with me all the time. "There's no-one to talk to in the local village, either, because the older people all speak in a kind of unusual patois. "So I don't speak in the bar. I just order two coffees and leave an enormous tip. That always causes a sensation."
Dr Who's Tom Baker teams up with The Kinks for download-only track
All profits go to charity Shelter
by Amber Maitland
1 December 2006
BT has recruited the help of the voice of Dr Who, Tom Baker, to raise money for charity Shelter this Christmas.
Baker has teamed up with 1960s pop band The Kinks for a track exclusively available for download. “You Really Got Me” is available now for pre-order on indiestore.com, and will be sold through Digital, iTunes, and other retailers from 18 December.
In addition, you can also support “Text Aid” by sending a text to a landline that is then read out in Baker's voice. Two pence from every text sent this way will be donated to Shelter from now until 8 January 2007. All of BT's proceeds from the track will be donated to the charity.
Tom Baker, who is also the narrator on Little Britain, said: “I'm delighted to have been asked back by BT as the voice of text-to-landline. It's rather like being Santa Claus, delivering all your festive greetings - I only wish I could hear what I’m saying!"
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