This Much Is True

Marise Hepworth, one of my colleagues on the Rep, who was a successful voice artist, told me to get in touch with Wendy Noel, who worked at the Bryan Drew agency in Shaftesbury Avenue and specialised in representing voice-over artists. Patrick Allen was one of hers. If you got on to Wendy Noel’s books, apparently, you were made. I sent Wendy a tape and she wrote back and said, ‘Well, you’re good, but I’ve got a full stable at present, so I can’t really offer you anything. But if I get a gap, I’ll get in touch.’

Eventually, many years later, she did.

Sexy Sonia

I have been in showbusiness for over half a century and in that time I’ve done all kinds of jobs: many of which I remain immensely proud of to this day, and others that, well, were somewhat less glamorous…

In the early seventies, while I waited for the much-anticipated phone call from Wendy Noel, imagining my carefully trained RP tones ringing out of radios and television sets everywhere and persuading people to drink a particular brand of tea, eat a certain kind of chocolate bar or even smoke a cigar (more stories on all those to follow), I got a call from Marise Hepworth.

My very first voice job was not what I had expected at all.

‘I’m doing some recordings for the Ann Summers sex shop. Would you like to do one?’ Marise said.

‘Well, how much do they pay?’

‘You get £300 in cash. No repeat fees.’

I said, ‘I don’t deal in cash.’ (I’ve followed my father’s advice and have always been ferociously careful. All my income is declared, so I’ve never been in trouble with the Inland Revenue.) But at that time, £300 was a tempting amount. ‘How do I get on to it?’

‘Go to the Ann Summers shop, make an appointment, and the guy who runs it will sort you out with an audition.’

I wasn’t entirely comfortable about the pornography aspect — Daddy already thought being an actress was akin to prostitution. I rang the shop and asked: ‘This is voice only, isn’t it? We’re definitely not on camera, are we?’

The woman reassured me that it was a porn audiotape — a take-home wanker’s kit, basically.

I duly went along to the shop on Tottenham Court Road. The chap at the till sent me to the back of the shop. I pushed my way through slightly greasy, pink and white, fringed plastic curtains, along a murky corridor, and arrived in a cavernous warehouse space, set right back behind the street. It was pitch-black in there and rather eerie, because there were no windows. The shelves were piled high with sex toys of every imaginable description: scrotum twisters, ticklers, handcuffs, nipple clamps and dildos. I’d never seen anything like it. I don’t go in for all that lark. I prefer natural to electrical goods.

I introduced myself to the man, and he said, ‘Oh, yes. Miriam Margolyes. Well, Miriam, I’ve written the script. Here it is, and the microphone is over there.’

I said, ‘You want me to do it here? In the warehouse?’

‘That’s fine. I just need to know that you can handle it. We’ll do the real thing in the studio.’

I gulped slightly and started to read out his appalling script, which was full of heavy breathing, squeals, vocal intercourse and more. I realise for all my dirty talk, I’m quite prudish, and I found it rather unpleasant having to pretend to achieve orgasm in front of this creepy bloke. However, it was a job, I gave it my all, and my moans and squeaks echoed back convincingly from the walls of this urban dungeon.

‘Yeah, that was good,’ the warehouse fellow said. ‘When are you free?’

When I said I was quite free for the next week or so, he gave me a date, and told me to report to Molinare studios in Foubert’s Place, just off Carnaby Street (which still exists, but it doesn’t do that kind of thing any more).

I turned up at the appointed hour to find that the engineer, David Hodge, was someone I’d worked with before. He was one of the very top sound engineers and I would go on to choose him later to record my show reel. (The sex tape wasn’t on it.)

He seemed a bit taken aback to find that I was the voice on this job, so I was all brisk and businesslike: ‘Yes, I’m not sure how we’re going to do it, but I’ll just do the best I can.’

The script had no redeeming features: no characterisation, and it didn’t even have a story. It was the account of schoolgirl called Sonia meeting a man and then engaging in a prolonged fucking session, all described in graphic detail. Not many words, but so much panting and gasping and squelching. Simulating orgasms (and there were a lot of orgasms) involved a significant amount of heavy breathing, and I had a bad headache by the end. Truly, one climax is much like another, but I was having to delve into my subconscious to achieve the variety I felt was expected. And at least if you have real sex, you have some fulfilment at the end — my only fulfilment was the three hundred quid. But I wasn’t complaining: that was a big pay cheque for those days.