Meet Miss 'Mind the gap'

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It is hard to imagine the woman behind the voice urging you to "mind the gap" on the Underground is anything more than an anonymous irritation. Her voice punctuates the daily lives of the millions of users of the Victoria and Bakerloo lines with remarks like: "The next station is Oxford Circus."

However, Emma Clarke is as articulate with her pen as she is with her mouth. The 31-year-old mother - yes, she is a real person - is being hailed as the next Carla Lane or Lynda La Plante after being commissioned to write a six-part sitcom to be broadcast on Radio 4 next September.

This follows a successful three-year stint as a professional writer, having penned two stage plays which have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe - something she would rather be recognised for than her work for the Tube.

"Oh definitely," she said in that unnervingly familiar voice. "What I have done for the Underground is not something I tend to brag about. When I am on the Tube myself I just want to punch the person who is telling me there is a mechanical fault when you have been stuck in the dark for five minutes.

"I have been a professional voiceover for 10 years and ultimately it is by no means mentally aerobic. I would be grateful to do fewer voiceovers and make writing my career." Her sitcom, Share And Share Alike, follows a group of investors in a club called the Cheadle Chancers, who play the stock market for kicks. "It is about how money fulfils emotional voids or not," said Miss Clarke, the mother of five-month-old Eleanor.

She has also written an educational series called Write Away for Channel 4, and her dark comedy Shaft, about two social misfits trapped in a lift, was adapted for radio and featured on Radio 4's review show Pick Of The Week.

While Miss Clarke does not have to listen to her voice on the Underground each day - she lives in Hale, Cheshire - it does not stop her from being sick of the sound of it. She has been the company voice on more than 150 radio stations throughout the UK including Capital FM, Virgin Radio and Classic FM.

"The worst thing in the world is when my radio alarm goes off in the morning and it is me," she said. "I used to be woken by my own words, like 'classic mornings with Henry Kelly'. It used to drive me mad. Even worse is when I phone organisations and it is me on the telephone switchboard, telling me to hold."

Miss Clarke will soon have the vocal monopoly on three Tube lines but she has never met those whose voices grace the remaining 10. "It would be great to meet them, to see their faces," she said. "Especially the poor woman on the Northern line who has been made to pronounce Highgate as Highgutt."

So, next time you are stranded somewhere between Leicester Square and Covent Garden, try to take comfort in the fact there is a human face behind the mechanical world of late trains and broken escalators.

 

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