Why Kirsty and Eddie’s radio voices are music to fans’ ears
HER honeyed tones have been described as ‘low, luscious and slightly husky… full of erotic suggestiveness’.
Meanwhile his deceptively laidback delivery, it has been suggested, ‘goes down as easy as a good malt – but beware of the scimitar-like kick lurking before the final glug’.
While their presentational styles might be markedly different, the distinctive Scottish accents of Kirsty Young and Eddie Mair have helped them top a national listeners’ survey to find radio’s most attractive male and female voices.
The two are long-time colleagues and first worked together at BBC Scotland. Yet as they celebrated their success in the Radio Times poll, Mair told the magazine that he
‘You just have to talk to people’
did little to help East Kilbride-born Miss Young’s fledgling career prospects after once giving her some terrible career advice.
In a joint interview in the BBC listings magazine, he disclosed that he had tried to talk the then Good Morning Scotland newsreader out of joining STV, telling her: ‘No one will ever hear from you again.’
Miss Young recalled: ‘You said, “You’re mad to leave the BBC”.’
Despite Mair’s advice, Miss Young, 47, found success at STV before moving on to front the early evening news bulletin for Channel 5.
She later returned to the BBC, where she has soothed listeners with her velvety patter for a decade as presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs.
Dundonian Mair, 50, who has won plaudits for hosting Radio 4’s PM with an airy bonhomie that suddenly hardens into rapier-sharp questioning, admitted: ‘Terrible advice. Thankfully, you didn’t take it.’
Miss Young recalled their BBC Scotland days, saying: ‘Eddie was working as a presenter and I’d go in and read bulletins.
‘I remember the first Gulf War (1990-91). There was a lot of massing on the border at Khafji and we had to say it properly.
‘Eddie sat opposite me, I’d say it three or four times in the bulletin and each time, mimed flicking the phlegm off his tie.
‘So he’s always been very supportive in that way.’
Mair retaliated playfully: ‘I’ve recollections Kirsty was the cleaner – but the story she tells now is she was presenting. I’m happy to go along with that, but my memory is different.’
The poll featured other Scottish voices in the top 10, including Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce and Radio 4 newsreader Susan Rae.
Miss Young said English listeners tended to regard Scottish or Irish accents as ‘classless’ because they were unable to place them in class terms. Her own favourite radio voices belong to Radio 4 presenter Edward Stourton and former Radio 4 newsreader and Classic FM presenter Charlotte Green, while Mair picked Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray, ‘because she’s very powerful’.
Asked to describe their own style, Miss Young said: ‘I hope I don’t have a radio voice. It’s a bit like having a telephone voice, isn’t it?
‘I think you just have to talk to people. I always think of it as a threeway conversation with the listener as a silent partner, so I’m just talking the way I would over lunch. But, I guess, I’m not swearing.’
Mair added: ‘I’d say I’m calm, slightly slurred.’
When selecting their favourite male and female voices, listeners were asked to choose from 40 names suggested by a panel of experts. More than 32,000 took part in the poll.
When the survey was last carried out 14 years ago, Miss Green, at the time a Radio 4 continuity announcer, and Sir Terry Wogan, who died earlier this year, were revealed as the public’s favourites.