Clunes: my lack of accent is no longer what the doctor ordered

MARTIN CLUNES has claimed his voiceover work dried up because advertisers favour regional accents.

The 60-year-old best known for playing Martin Ellingham in the ITV series Doc Martin and Gary Strang in Men Behaving Badly said he was once sought for his narrative skills but was now “out of fashion”.

Clunes, who was born in Wimbledon, south-west London, but now lives in Dorset, told Radio Times: “I have a studio here. I’d been doing voiceovers remotely for ages, but recently I’ve completely gone out of fashion. I’ve no idea why, it’s an advertising thing.”

Asked if he was “too pale, stale and male”, he added: “Entirely, absolutely. No accent, no regionality in my voice whatsoever. That used to be what they wanted, what they called a brown voice.”

Clunes voiced Kipper in the animated children’s series Kipper the Dog and Harry in Safeway’s ‘When Harry Met Molly’ advertising campaign from 1993 to 1999. He has also narrated documentaries for ITV, including Islands of Britain in 2009, and acted in Baldi, a BBC Radio 4 series.

The traditional tone set by the BBC’S first radio broadcast in 1922 has long given way to regional accents. The success of Peaky Blinders and Normal People have shown an international appetite exists for shows with diverse casts and Welsh actors such as Rob Brydon get regular offers of voice work.

Toby Hancock, a former agent at devine Voices International Voice Agency, said: “There definitely is a trend towards more regional accents.”

John Altman, who played Nick Cotton in Eastenders, is listed as a voice actor with Soho Voices agency. Its website features a playable recording of his cockney twang, with his voice described as “confident, warm, sincere, deep, smooth”.

Dominic Littlewood, the Essex-born TV presenter, is also on the site, alongside “English, northern” actor Nigel Pivaro who was in Coronation Street.