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Message to announcer who mocked Tube: You're fired
Lucy Hanbury, Evening Standard26.11.07
The woman whose voice can be heard across the Tube network in her role as the official "announcer" has been axed after releasing a series of spoof announcements.
Emma Clarke has been the "voice of the Tube" for eight years, urging passengers to "mind the gap". But in a series of spoof messages posted on her website, the 36-year-old married mother of two attacked the transport system, claiming she avoided it at all costs.
Also singled out for mockery were American tourists, Sudoku solvers and peeping Toms. "We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly," she says in one message.
In another, she warns: "Would the passenger ... pretending to read a paper but who is actually staring at that woman's chest please stop. You're not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert."
But now the parent company of the Tube has made an announcement of its own. A TfL spokesman said: "Some of the spoof announcements are very funny. But Emma is a bit silly to go round slagging off her client's services. London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays."
Ms Clarke today said she was "very disappointed" at TfL's reaction. Speaking from her home in Altrincham, Cheshire, she said: "I don't feel that I have been slagging them off - that was never my intention. It was just a bit of a laugh, I think they have missed the point of what I was trying to do."
The voiceover artist and writer put the messages on the website she set up earlier this month after canvassing friends on what they would most like to hear.
Reader views (6)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
Thank you. You have just helped me make up my mind, I'll vacation elsewhere.
- A. Traveler, New York City
Fired?
Just one small reason why Britain is the laughing stock of the rest of the world.
- Andrew Taylor, London UK
I am just wondering, if Ms Clarke was issued with an official warning first.
- Robert Zimmerman, London
She'll mind the gap in her income now.
- Squiz, Islington
Killjoy bureaucrats! Sack them for being conceited and mocking a woman they've sacked! It's alright for them to have a laugh about sacking her! Double standards.
- Elliot Franks, London
Confucious say - don't bite hand that feeds you - to joke offline is one thing - but to do it online - well that's just dumb.
- Julienne, London
