Voice of Wembley Stadium, Wembley arena and 350 UK radio stations on a Sunday afternoon this voice over guy is not so much deep and American, more growly and traditionally British, which is just as well as the UK's hottest property right now.
British voice over Howard Ritchie, is one of the fastest growing UK voices, in-fact it is not just being the voice of London's Number 1 hit music station but also being the voice over for more than 30 radio stations in Australia, stations in Dubai, Greece and Malta. In television he is known for Britain's Got Talent launches on ITV1 and is rumoured as a favorite for the X Factor show replacing Peter Dickson if the show decide to er towards a more credible sound in its forthcoming re-vamp.
Howard admits he is not one of those character voices, which he admires so much, in-fact he often talks about his friend Andrew Grantham who is the talking pet guy from You Tube as being his idol.
Whilst Howard is the UK's most in demand voice over right now he consistently talks about how he feels about his talking cat and dog friend Andrew getting 37 million You tube videos. "I will never ever use the word talent to describe what I do when this guy exists" Howard says...
The UK's number 1 voice over agent recently signed Howard. London's Hobson's International now handles all of his television work, which includes commercials and promos across all the channels, and whilst he admits his range of is hardly extensive we reminded him that the talking dog guy probably couldn't brand a radio or TV promo like he can.
When we asked Howard about movie voice-overs, Howard screwed his face up and said that those days are dying fast. "Movie voice overs tend to spoil otherwise brilliant creative and visuals, that is why many movie companies who do post production trailers only use voices occasionally and instead use evocative text where there would have been a voice before" He says " I am working on a spoof series of fake movie trailers which is along the lines of those virtual lyrics things, but I haven't you tubed them yet as I am worried I'll come across like a clown."
Being hailed as the next voice over man it is clear that he will do movies and much much more, but he says that there is a big quandary at his level: "...you have to be good profile for people to want you, but then they don't want you if you have been on other things" which seems like a dichotomy.
He was not always the voice over, he was a DJ and seemed to create some significant success there too although he is adamant that the dance music and club industry's changed so rapidly he said he feels like one of those employees of Rover in the 70s and 80s who suddenly turned up for work and the factory was gone. "As soon as you could buy DJ gear in Argos and John from next door could mix two records together I knew it wouldn't be long before John bought some records and called himself DJ Fire or something equally not cool, so I got the F*&* out" he gestures a pretend spit on the floor in front of me.
He also has a reasonable production back ground having remixed for Ministry and Sony BMG, which he says is actually a disadvantage to him being the voice over he is today. " When I go into a posh Soho studio to do a voice over and the mic sounds like shit I can't believe it, radio gives you too much luxury. "When I go in to Capital Radio the Microphone makes me sound amazing... like someone else... and I always like that feeling" he jokes.
As we left him in Oxford Street Borders we sensed this summer a lot more people would hear his voice than possibly any other voice in the UK, but yet at the same time, nobody would know or care.
We pondered on the notion of being "the voice over" perhaps someone or something that nobody knows, but also everyone knows...
As we descended into Oxford Circus Tube, this time more intently listening to the tube announcements wondering who that was and what was his story.
Author
Penny Laine
voice over
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