Mandy Morton

Enlish upper class, English East End, West Country, Midlands, Northern England, Suffolk rural, village yokle. Impersonations include Queen Elizabeth II and Miss Piggy but I am capable of creating voices for a number of eccentric middle aged and elderly women in dialects as mentioned. Larger than life funny and theatrical types would be my preferred projects.

I have worked for the BBC for the past 25 years and before that I was a professional singer songwriter, recording 6 albums on major record labels, so my voice has always been my biggest asset. My work with the BBC has included voicing and producing programme trails, producing and presenting daytime and evening programmes including news, arts, music, chat shows, outside broadcasts and pre-recorded documentaries both for national and local radio services.I have recorded and produced theatre for radio and have a keen interest in biography which has featured a great deal in my work. Outside the BBC I have recorded announcements, audio books and instruction manuals and speech soundtracks for promotional films.I have also been called upon to chair seminars and host a number of public speaking events and have been the key judge for many years in the Youth Speaks competition. I have researched, produced and delivered a series of English Folklore and Music lectures in Cambridge and have toured my music across the UK and Scandinavia. I was educated to grammar school level and took up a full time music career on leaving school.I wrote and recorded 6 albums with Decca,Polydor and Banshee records and toured with my band until joining the BBC in 1987 as a radio presenter. I was BBC trained in speech, audio and music editing, programme production and live presentation. My skills enabled me to work in all areas of speech radio including programmes, trail production, news reading, outside broadcasts and radio documentary. I later went on to specialise in BBC Radio arts programmes featuring theatre, music, books and celebrity biography. I have also done a number of speech projects outside the BBC and am used to recording long speech strands, audio books and industrial and commercial work and am also very happy to edit all manner of recorded speech as it is a skill I enjoy. I record my projects in a small studio using an Audio-technica AT 2035 microphone with Focusrite Saffire 6 USB interface into a Dell Inspiron lap top.I also use an SE Electronics Reflexion Filter Pro vocal screen to maximise the voice quality. I edit recorded speech and music using Jutel Quick Edit Pro. Having worked as a BBC journalist for 25 years I think the most important and enjoyable part of this work is listening to what people have to say and how they say it: voices are at the centre of what I do. Communication is everything and I regard my voice as a gift that I'm lucky to have. It has given me a wonderful career in music and an amazing opportunity to be part of the world's greatest communication industry at the BBC where I have worked with and learned from some of the most talented voices I will ever hear. It is a joy to be able to use my voice in so many different ways and to make a career out of it is still for me the best job in the world.