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Robbie McGregor: The Voice Of NodePhone

Long term readers would be well aware that I am a fan of ex-SBS voiceover man Robbie McGregor and was very disappointed when SBS decided to remove Robbie from the network [1] last year. Since then I have been pleased to hear Robbie reading a wide variety of commercials and other voiceovers.

You can therefore imagine that I was even more pleased when I dialled a phone number incorrectly one day, and discovered that Robbie McGregor has recorded the announcements for Internode’s phone network NodePhone [2]. I think these announcements are much better than the rather annoying messages produced by Telstra, and so for comparative purposes (and also to give Robbie a free plug), here is a sample of Robbie on NodePhone.

The following sound file includes two messages read by Robbie, one of the Telstra messages (does anyone know what the quietly muttered letters mean?), and Robbie as the talking clock.

[audio:http://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/RobbieMcGregorNodePhone.mp3]
Download [3]

I find the style of Robbie’s announcement to be a bit calmer, and more caring than the ones by Telstra. For some reason Robbie seems to come across as actually caring about the fact that, for one reason or another, the call you attempted wasn’t able to be completed, whereas Telstra’s faster, repeated messages, with seemingly pointless letters thrown in, come across as a case of “we don’t care if you can make this call or not…hang up and stop bothering our equipment”.

Perhaps I just give these things too much consideration.

Samuel

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#1 Comment By Frankster On July 3, 2007 @ 5:44 pm

Hi Samuel,

I’ve got some of Robbie’s voiceovers from a session or two he did for 2UW in 1986, maybe I could forward them to you if required.

I was told the letters and numbers at the end of the announcements in a lower level are either a key number used to identify the exchange, or are a catalog number of the announcement. One of optus’s ends with 02PU11-30.

#2 Comment By Pen 15 On July 4, 2007 @ 12:21 am

Thats very interesting about the letters and numbers. I had no idea.