WIBU to ask a semi-celebrity to record me a voicemail message?

[Karenaki]

I run an annual awards ceremony (not for entertainment industry, not as glitzy as it sounds!). We hire a stand up comedian as the host, on stage, and another guy to be ‘voice of god’ who introduces people, talks over the crowd when winners are making their way up etc. his voice is very recognisable, works a lot on the beeb.
we’ve used him for many years, lovely chap. I had a sudden idea I could ask him to record me a voicemail message for my phone.
A/ Would that be appropriate, to ask for a personal favour at a work event, and B/ can you lovely people think of something funny he could say?!?!

NB, you’d recognise his voice, but not his face.

Are you going to pay him?

er why? Sounds odd. I wouldn’t bother.

im assuming it’s Alan Deadicoat (sp) or similar

If his voice is his livelihood, you would need to pay him.

You can’t ask him to do work for which he’s normally paid, for free. It goes way beyond asking for a quick selfie or an autograph. Very cheeky and a bit tacky.

Just see if he's on Cameo and pay him for it.

I think it’s a bit cheeky to as for a freebie. Also, is there much point if you can’t think of what you want them to say?

I don't think it's appropriate unless you have a very good relationship with him.

If his voice is the source of his income, it's pretty rude and definitely unprofessional to ask for a freebie.

His voice is his livelihood.
You'd be a CF to ask him to do it for free.

My friend did this with an uber-famous hip hop legend. Then didn’t save it properly because she was drunk. Apparently it was an amazing message, and the guy was happy to do it.

Oh no god don't ask him that, that's really embarrassing!

Not remotely appropriate! It's his job! If you must ask him to do it then you'd have to pay him market rate. And even then he'd be well within his rights to say no (because his voice is his living and it devalues it if he's doing people's voicemail messages, even for a fee - I'd say no if I was him).

If you ask him, you need to ask him with the offer of "would it be possible at all to pay you as a job to record a voice note", also be aware those things probably don't come cheap.

Does anyone even leave voicemail recordings now!? Trying to think of the last time I heard one.

Awful idea. I would say yes if he is on cameo as another has suggested as it would suggest he's happy with this kind of work and you would be paying. However, this is his profession, please be respectful of that and remember he is still just a bloke attending an event in a professional capacity, he has his professional reputation to keep, he is not there just to provide general amusement amongst you and your mates.

I don't think his agent would allow it.

His voice is his trademark.

If you can get enough clips of him just speaking recorded you could feed it into one of those AI tools and generate whatever you like

Or not be a weirdo 😆

Drop a hint, are you on cameo? I would love a personalised voice message.

Cringe if you're not working, unprofessional if you are.

Thanks all, yes I hadn’t really thought it through. You’re quite right, will ditch that idea!

Lol. Dave benson Phillips did this for my cousin once.

The absolute neck of asking this aside, and even if you paid for this as a service, Think about every context that might come up when someone will need to leave you a Voicemail.

To inform you of bad news?
An employer?

No

I honestly thought the days of funny voicemail recordings were long gone. This is cringe as hell. Don't do it.

I tell you one circumstance when this would be acceptable. If your organisation is a charity and this person thinks you're a good cause and has a history of regularly working for you, I think it would be OK to ask them nicely (not after a glass of wine at the dinner) to record the organisation's switchboard message, offering to pay them properly.

That's about it.