But will Lee Ridley's act be the same if he reprogrammes his speech synthesiser

‘Lost Voice Guy’ Lee Ridley is hoping to acquire a Geordie accent.

The former Britain’s Got Talent winner has become famous for the robotic voice that comes from his communication aid – but now wants to reprogramme it so he can sound like the rest of his family,

Ridley, who is from Consett, County Durham, has put out an appeal for men from the North East to lend their voice to speech technology experts to sample.

‘I promise it isn't as scary as it sounds,’ the comic wrote on his website. ‘In fact, the process is quite simple. You’d just need to spend a total of around eight hours in a recording studio…  You’d be paid for your time in the studio, and you’d have my eternal gratitude.’

The volunteer would be recorded by Edinburgh-based speech synthesis company CereProc, who specialise in making artificial intelligence voices sound more human.

Ridley, 40,  admits that he will miss cracking jokes at the expense of the robotic, well-spoken voice that currently comes from his tablet. 

‘I’m originally from County Durham, but you’d never know it,’ he quips. ‘I’ve lived there most of my life but still haven’t picked up the accent. In fact, I sound like a posh Robocop’.

In a 2018 BBC Three documentary, Ridley investigated whether Geordie was the funniest accent.

And the following year he made a film for The One Show in which he helped a young man called Jack acquire a Black Country voice for his synthesiser to match his family and friends. 

Ridley was left unable to talk after he developed the brain inflammation encephalitis when he was six months old. Because it developed within his first year he was classed as having cerebral palsy.

He studied journalism at uni and worked at Sunderland Council before trying stand-up for the first time in 2012, using his synthesiser. And by 2015 he was a full-time comedian, winning Britain’s Got Talent three years later.

However, he’s previously been in two minds as to whether he should give his software a more natural voice.

In a 2019 interview, he said he ‘didn’t have much choice’ in how he spoke as the app  only had a limited number of voices, but added: ‘I think the posh accent makes my jokes even funnier. I’ve sounded like this for most of my life now, so I do think of it as being my own voice. I think I’d feel weird if I had to change it now.’

And in his book, Only In It For The Parking, he wrote: ‘Stephen Hawking’s voice identified him, my UK Adult Male Graham voice is as much a part of my stand-up now as my humour, T-shirts and facial expressions.’

Ridley has asked men aged 30 to 40 from the North East who might be able to help him reprogramme his communication aid to record themselves reading a paragraph from the book, below, and send the file to lostvoiceguynews@gmail.com. 

But he adds: ‘Please do not apply if you know me personally though. No offence to my mates, but that’d just be a bit too weird!’ 

Only In It For The Parking will be released in paperback on March 11, while the third series of his sitcom Ability is currently airing on Radio 4.

Published: 16 Feb 2021