Exclusive Temple Report Number 5 – 21st July, 2003

Testing…One, Two

Richard talks about Game shows, voiceovers & Dr. Who

By Richard E. Grant

I have just recorded an episode of Q.I. Hosted by Stephen Fry and Alan Davies for ITV which gets aired this autumn.

An highly enjoyable show recorded in front of a live audience and involving Stephen Fry asking ‘quite interesting’ but totally obscure questions that each contestant is free to press their buzzers to answer.

The result is a mixture of conjecture, general knowledge and surreal invention on the part of the contestants. Fry is such a generous and funny host, that you are guaranteed a good time of it and each episode features new guests, with comic Alan Davies acting as Fry’s stooge or fall guy.

Dr. Who? – I am probably one of four people on the planet who has never seen Dr. Who as I grew up in a country that did not have television. Tom Baker is the actor who is most frequently quoted to me as being the definitive doctor.

The advantage of doing a voice-over for a cartoon, or reading an audio book, is the speed of it all. Dr Who took four days to record which is a nano-second in relation to how long it takes to complete the animation process. It requires no costume, make-up, special effects, script learning or lighting requirements of the actor, as you simply show up, get plonked in front of a microphone and given the green light to start recording. So it is a much less time consuming, easy going atmosphere than filming or doing a play in the theatre.

Plus you get to work with a great bunch of actors, in this case Sir Derek Jacobi, whom I knew from Gosford Park, and Diana Quick.

However, unlike any other animation voice-over I’ve ever done or audio book recorded, there were journalists and Who aficionado’s around every day doing interviews with the cast , writer and director and asking the kind of detailed questions that I couldn’t answer, being a Dr Who ignoramus.

From the experience of recording the scripts, I concluded that  this Dr. Who is essentially an intergalactic “Sherlock Holmes” figure. It will now be up to the audience for this animated cartoon version to decide whether a cartoon cuts the mustard.

I have been offered convention autograph signing days already and declined on the grounds that as I am not playing Dr Who in a film or tv version, I don’t honestly feel I’ve earned the right to do so, having just done the voice for this incarnation.

That’s it from me.

Cheers
reg