Voice of God Voice Over
One of the areas of work I love doing most of all as a voice over artist is being a Voice of God voice over, otherwise known as the Voice of God announcer.
The Voice of God announcer is the voice the audience hears making live announcements before and during an awards show, usually reading out the list of nominees for example. And in many cases also interacting with the event host.
The performer remains out of sight however is still very much an essential part of the event.
The Voice of God Voice Over style is synonymous with the big intro voice you’ll hear on Saturday Night TV shows such as Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, Text Santa and Beat the Star.
I’ve been the in-programme voice on all of those shows, and plenty more. Well isn’t that handy!
Saturday Night Takeaway in-show Voice of God Voice Over
With the lifting of Covid restrictions in the Autumn of 2021 the live events industry had a lot of catching up that it wanted to do. Up until then a lot of awards shows had been put on hold.
It was a pleasure to be asked to be the live event voice of God voice over for numerous awards shows in central London. Among them the NEPA Awards, the SCEPTRE Awards (shopping centre awards – who knew?) and the NCE Tunnelling Awards Festival.
NCE Tunnelling Awards
My co-host for the NCE Awards was comedian, actress and writer Lucy Porter – we’d worked together before at a previous live awards ceremony. The brief was to feel free to ad-lib and have fun with the event which is exactly what we did.
"Thank you SO MUCH Jonathan. You were absolutely amazing, we will work together again."
As VoG I sit with production crew at the side of the 500 seat theatre with the producer. It’s my job to make the live pre-show audience announcements and then play my part reading out the nominations and interacting with the host during the show.
In addition, timing has to be impeccable, names pronounced correctly and the announcements need to be clear, authoritative and credible.
Celebration...
Because it’s an evening of celebration, to me it needs to be fun while not forgetting to make the award recipients feel special. Consequently, I always enjoy adding my own favourite niche ingredients where appropriate; irony and maybe just a hint of parody. The odd ad-lib also never goes amiss. A fantastic event, in a very smart setting it was a huge pleasure to be part of. The evening was a great success and audience and client feedback really rather good.
In fact, so overwhelming was the feedback that we were both later awarded freedom of the City of London. We can now be seen exercising our right to herd sheep across Tower Bridge.*
* OK, I might’ve made that bit up.
Unsurprisingly, as with all live awards events it’s right up there with my favourite bookings of the year.
2022 has already had many awards shows booked in. I expect plenty more to come throughout the rest of the year. I’m looking forward to a busy 2023 in VoG-land.
Click here to read about my latest Voice of God Voice Over news or here to hear more of my TV work.
Alternatively, please click here to contact me about your event.