Meeting the man who speaks live to America

. . . from his cottage in the north-east

His is the gravelly, crisp voice of America’s CNBC news channel, streaming into millions of living rooms across the United States every day.

But Philip Banks, the man behind the famous voice, does not reside in New York, Los Angeles or even London.

He provides his internationally recognised vocal talents from his cottage in the windswept village of Portgordon near Buckie.

“‘Is that actually a thing?’ is the response I get from most people,” chuckled the 58-year-old.

“No one can believe that I do what I do.” From a soundproof booth in his home, Philip lends his voice to an assortment of global film corporations and TV production companies who head-hunt his powerful tones to advertise their product.

As well as CNBC, big names of his past and present clients include cable network CNN, Sky, the BBC and even the Star Wars Rogue One trailer for Disney.

He’s spent close to 30 years perfecting his vocal skills, and can supply a variety of accents and characters in anything from gruff and croaky to velvety smooth.

Originally from the south of England, Philip moved from Somerset up to the north-east 28 years ago to be closer to his wife’s relatives, but after they went their separate ways he decided to stay on.

“Luckily in my job you don’t need to be anywhere specific so here is as good a place as any until I get a better idea,” he said.

“Me, my Border Collie Bess and a tumbledown cottage by the sea, life’s pretty good.”

But Philip’s career wasn’t always so unconventional.

As a young man he studied law and economics at Oxford before working in insurance and investment management.

It was a merely a chance encounter in a radio studio that set his brain whirring about the possibilities of a life outside the office nine to five.

“My company at the time wanted to organise some radio sponsorship so I went along to sort things out,” he said.

“I was introduced to a BBC presenter and we sat in the studio together.

“While we were waiting, she indulged my curiosity and showed me what all the buttons were for, playing different commercials and voice clips for various bits and pieces.

“I was intrigued. Who were these people that lent their voices to all sorts of random products?

“I had a bit of a mad idea and on my next day off I phoned up a guy I knew who owned a recording studio.

“He usually did demos for hip bands but the two of us spent a whole afternoon larking around like schoolboys trying to get my voice to sound vaguely professional.

“In the end I walked away with a two-minute reel of me doing different voices and character work.

“Then, I phoned up the world and his wife.” It wasn’t an easy first two years for Philip, who saw voicing jobs arrive only sporadically despite the effort he was putting in to secure them.

He began to look at it as a small side project.

“When I wanted to buy something, I’d take a job,” he said simply.

MY WEEKLY AUDIENCE IS 300 MILLION, YET NO ONE KNOWS WHO IAM

At age 32, Philip was still working in insurance full-time, but things changed when he was made redundant.

“I was going for interview after interview but nothing was coming through,” he said.

“I had no delusions of grandeur about the type of job I wanted, I just wanted to pay the bills.

“That was when I started to focus on voiceover work, more for survival than anything else.

“Any time the phone rang with a job I said yes.

“At one point I was even in Casualty playing a TV reporter.

“It was bizarre being surrounded by professional actors but I needed to pay my mortgage.

“My first TV promo was for BBC2. It’s a bit like getting a badge of honour – having the BBC on your CV leads to more big things.”

But the life of a voice actor isn’t as glamorous as it may seem.

Although Philip does travel to exotic locations on occasion, the vast bulk of his work is done in his second bedroom.

“It’s crammed with technology,” he said. “The term ‘home studio’ implies some degree of amateurism, but my stuff here needs to be as good as the tech studios in central London or LA.

“If it’s not, it will be immediately obvious and any recordings are completely unusable for professional firms looking for high-quality surround sound.”

Philip’s recording sessions last anywhere from five minutes to five hours, as he reads scripts to producers who record him from thousands of miles away.

As the promotional voice for CNBC in States, logistics – and in particular, time zones – can be an issue.

Philip will often find himself working in the middle of the night to fit around the recording schedules of his North American clients.

This is due to the fact most firms prefer to connect live to Philip’s cottage in Moray to record, rather than have him produce the clips without their guidance.

He works most days, churning out more than 900 sessions a year.

But despite the hard work, expense and at times unpredictability of the business, Philip can’t see himself doing anything else.

“I love the invisibility of it,” he said. “Audience figures for Coronation Street are about eight million, and the cast are considered to be famous.

“My weekly audience is 300 million, yet no one knows who I am.”

And that’s the way he likes it.

Photographs by Jason Hedges Voiceover artist Philip Banks in his home studio, left, and right, with his Border Collie Bess near his home in Portgordon, Moray.