The Labour Government is in trouble. Economic woes are piling up and the
Conservatives are in full cry. Unfortunately, that cry may not be what
voters want to hear. For the voice lambasting the Government is rather
shrill, strangulated and uncomfortable on the ear. Tory backbenchers are
uneasy. The media are all over the story. Dramatic action is needed.
It is the mid-1970s and Margaret Thatcher's aides send for a voice coach. The
rest is history. The Conservative leader ditches a voice that could strip
the paint off the door of No10 for something deeper and more resonant. It
might still make small children cry when it booms out of the television and
cause Whitehall buildings to crumble when raised in anger against a cabinet
“wet”. But there is no doubt that this voice has authority. Thatcher goes on
to win three general elections.
Well, with the Tories once more scenting power, voice coaches have again been
summoned to help find the right tone for their attacks. But, where Thatcher
strove for depth, gravitas and authority, today's Tories are simply asking
for tips on how to sound less posh. Chief among them is George Osborne, the
embattled Shadow Chancellor who, it transpires, has been receiving help from
Valerie Savage, a Harley Street speech and language consultant. Given that
his detractors, both inside and outside his party, continue to throw his
“toff” background at him, this is perhaps understandable.
“Because of his background he does need some help,” says Veronique Henderson,
creative director of consultants CMB Image. “He needs to be more ‘of the
people'.” She believes that Osborne's posh accent and background is not a
problem by itself, just in combination with the difficulties arising from
his meetings with the oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “It's not so much what you
sound like, but put the two together, poor chap, it doesn't help. Some of
the images in the papers were very unhelpful.”
The difference is already noticeable. Recently, Osborne has sounded different.
His voice is deeper, less constricted, not so, well, posh. “I think he has
changed,” says Philippa Davies, a psychologist who has helped leading
politicians and businessmen with voice-coaching. “I heard him this morning.
His voice sounds a bit more under control and a bit more conversational. I
thought he sounded more confident and more relaxed. I think that's what
everybody wants to go for today; to sound quite casual and informal and
chatty.” Politicians who seek voice coaching are most often looking to be
“authoritative and credible. Sometimes they say ‘charismatic'.”
Ann Treneman, the Times parliamentary sketch writer who has sat through
countless Osborne Commons performances, has also noticed the change. “I
think that his voice is better. Certainly compared to two years ago when I
was always writing about his squeaky voice.” Under pressure, however, she
has detected the old, slightly nasal tone coming through.
The son of a baronet, George Osborne was educated at St Paul's School and
Oxford University, where he was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club.
To be fair, he does not sound outrageously posh, but he can sound clipped
and a strangulated quality enters his voice, particularly when he is getting
excited. The more exercised he gets, the more constrained and posher he
sounds.
Now posh isn't necessarily a bad thing. David Cameron sounds posher than
Osborne. But his posh, according to the experts, is a better posh. Henderson
points out that Cameron “comes across as having more of a sense of humour
and everyone knows that he is trying hard. He rolls up his sleeves and gets
on with it. Osborne seems a bit more aloof.”
Davies says: “You can have a well-modulated, pleasant-sounding speech
whatever your accent. People's attitudes have changed. I think that a lot of
people don't like to feel they are so class-conscious that they would be put
off by a posh accent.”
Boris Johnson, another unabashed posh Tory, and Cameron are easy to listen to
because their voices are full of warmth and confidence. Cameron's famous
speech without notes to the Tory conference was a “fantastic stunt” but,
says Davies, “you need to have huge confidence. You can't disengage the
voice from the performance. What makes George Osborne get a bit strident and
higher pitched, perhaps a little bit over-emphatic, is very likely to be
tension, because a more relaxed body doesn't sound like that. David Cameron
is obviously really, really good at controlling his nerves and talking in
this very relaxed style. It's what all chief executives aspire to these
days.”
Even with the help of a coach, changing the way we sound is hard. “It's pretty
difficult to change accents, particularly if speaking to the media under
pressure, because your accent will come through then. It is very difficult.
It's a habit and the way we speak is totally distinctive, it's like a
fingerprint, all the settings of a speaking voice,” says Davies.
So what might Osborne have been doing? Davies says that he may have been
helped to soften his consonants by repeating elocution exercises such as
“ten tiny teddies trod on the tiger”. Another technique would have been to
drop his pitch frequently, in the way that news readers do “so everything
sounds very definite and resolved. That creates an apparently lower pitch
overall. Much more grounded and authoritative”.
Margaret Thatcher changed the resonance balance of her voice, being trained to
speak with “excessive pharyngeal resonance” by repeating phrases such as
“oooh car gah”. Davies explains: “That would give her control over muscles
in the top of the back of the mouth and she would be able to lift them and
have greater space and lower pitch - almost like using the space inside your
mouth as a cello rather than a violin.” Davies also worked with John Major.
“It was towards the end of his tenure and things were not going very well.
He didn't have time for any technical voice work, he just wanted to come
over better on TV and in speeches. I asked him who he admired. He said Dr
Finlay from Dr Finlay's Casebook. So we worked on what friendly country GPs
do. They reassure and explain gently. You try to get politicians to do more
of that.”
Tony Blair resisted help with his voice because he didn't think he needed it.
He simply went for the age-old technique, known to most “posh” children at
state schools, of lapsing, when necessary, into estuary English.
Voice experts believe that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is following
suit. Earlier this year, Luan de Burgh, a voice coach who works with actors
and politicians, pointed out that in speeches Miliband was dropping Ts from
the ends of words and introducing Blair-like glottal stops. “People often
adopt an accent that says ‘I'm one of you'. I might do it too if a plumber
is giving me a quote, so they don't assume I'm wealthy, but Miliband risks
over-egging the pudding,” he said.
Davies coached more than 100 New Labour MPs before the 1997 election. “Some
altered the way they communicated, lost accents that were intrusive; they
were extremely motivated to do so.”
However, on the whole, she has found that politicians lag behind the corporate
world in the level and quality of their training. “I've come across people
at Cabinet Minister level who have had very little training. They learn on
the job and I think that's a shame.”
Gordon Brown has had help on his speaking style and those who follow him
closely claim to have detected a softening of his voice since he became
Prime Minister. His poor vision means that when he is giving a speech he has
to be very close to his notes or the autocue. “He has a cramped demeanour
and so he's tense,” says one former Downing Street aide, who moans that
modern politicians “don't have any music in their voices because they don't
read anything except government documents”.
At least they may be starting to realise how bad they are. Davies has been
recruited to help with a cross-party initiative to train young council
leaders and political stars of the future. Things can only get better, as
they were once so keen to tell us.
Speaking out...
Self-coached
Lily Allen
“People are giving me s**t about being a mockney and denying my middle-class
roots,” complains Allen on her blog. “In fact, the last thing I
recorded I practically sound like Camilla Parker Bowles.”
Joss Stone
“I'm confused I guess,” says the Devon-born singer who, since swapping the
West Country for California, also seems to have swapped her accent for one
resembling a cross between Paris Hilton and Barbara Windsor.
Uncoachable
Boris Johnson
He claims that he was fired from BBC Radio 4 because his voice was “too posh”.
But the accent, a product of Eton and Oxford, did not come cheap and the
self-proclaimed victim of “vocal correctness” has stood firm in his
plumminess.
Robert Peston
The dark days of economic woe have been made even darker with the emergence of
the BBC Business Editor as “the voice of the credit crunch”. Labelled
“raggedy and querulous” by this paper, it is a voice that renders bad news
even worse.
In need of coaching
David Beckham
Described in Vanity Fair as “wind chimes that tinkle constantly in the
background”, and recently voted as having Britain's most hated celebrity
accent, this is a voice that could do with some help.
Jonathan Ross
The disgraced presenter's unabashed “w”, more technically known as a
labiodental approximant, is almost as famous as he is. Some people love him
for it. Most don't.
Man about the hice: when cut-glass doesn't cut it
There was a time, probably when Cecil Rhodes was prattling on about being born
English making one a winner in the lottery of life, when having a posh
accent opened all the right doors. Not any more. Talking posh still counts
in some spheres - the arts, the military, girlfriends' mothers - but as
often as not the doors slam shut.
Bottle-waving urchins, landlords of certain pubs in South London and almost
all members of the Labour Party seem to acquire a special fire in their eyes
when they hear vowels being stretched and the expression “Good Lord”.
I am not complaining. If you are going to have a prejudice, then making snap
judgments about people from their accents is a fairly good one. It gives a
reasonable guide to how much their parents paid for their education and, if
the accent does not quite fit, a startling insight into their insecurity.
Despite this, George Osborne is wise to do a reverse Eliza Doolittle. If a
politician wishes to be considered leadership material he or she must be a
person with whom you would like to share a pint, whether it be Pimm's or
Carlsberg.
Jack Malvern
