Who is the continuity announcer on R4 with the deep voice & difficult to place accent.....

[yappybluedog]

...because I thought it was Zebedee Soames but if it is he looks NOTHING like he sounds

Yes, la la, that's exactly my point. They want to seem - ostentatiously - diverse, buy only in a certain way. So a black person with the 'right' accent will tend to get hired over a black person with an odinary or rp accent. A sarf london street accent or another accent that white people can easily recognise as black is a neat way to tick some boxes. As is an interest in 'black' subjects, such as rap or grime or crime. I would guess that being obviously aurally black would be even more important on the radio. I'm not saying he doesn't have a nice voice, but it's not a British accent, and I don't see anyone else being hired in his job with a foreign accent so I'm cynical about the motive for it.

radio 4 is a stronghold for the older lady. even there - most of the ladies are in the 30-50 bracket - Jane garvey, kirsty young and martha Kearney all limber under 50. Jenni Murray is older at 59...but she's the only one i've found with my quick wiki search.

but it is an anomaly in the BBC - how many women over 35 on radio 1, or even radio 2??

Watching day time tv, I quickly clock up black/asian/ young funky female presenters. Not many older women though.

which is ridiculous, and part of a weird obsession with attracting younger audiences - the population is ageing! why not attract an older audience!

ah yes, i also think there is a measure of political correctness from the Beeb, as complaints about few black/asian people on radio is somewhat suspect.

Have you any idea how ignorant and insulting that sounds - that he only got the job because he sounds black? Twenty years ago, people were coming out with the same claptrap about John Naughtie and John Humphries and John Cole because they were too Scottish/Welsh/Irish - only got the jobs to make the BBC look better, why can't they use people who speak real English etc etc.

Maybe he's just better for the job than the UK-born applicants .

@lalalonglegs - he got the job because 1) he's great and because, of all the other great applicants 2) the Beeb likes to look PC. whilst not actually caring about representing its audience.

when it comes to media motives, a whole bunch of cynicism is due.

just look at Arlene Philips or Moira Stewart, two examples of women booted for being too old.

He's not rubbish, he perfectly competent and pleasant enough to listen to, but is he much better than anyone else, even black people with British accents? So much better that the Radio4 head honchos were prepared to employ someone with quite a strong foreign accent? Or perhaps the employed him at least partly because he had that accent that clearly marks him as black - even on the radio? If you think that questions of gender and race and box ticking play no part in recruitment then I think you may be wrong. It is quite a departure to employ someone as a continuity announcer on R4 with a strong foreign accent, don't you think?

Interesting oneopinionatedmother, I never really think about how old poeple are, or for that matter what race they are on the radio. I always assume everyone on R4 is older I think because I've grown up listening to it.
Infact I think I must be young at heart(or in denial) because I'm always surprised when I see someone on the television who is 28 like me because I they look older than me.

and it may be worth adding that employing people with regional accents was a policy decision - if the beeb made a policy decision to employ older women you'd quickly see that in their staffing choices.

i'm often suprised at how old they are even when i've known their voice all my life.

i might add that black men are particularly over represented on tv - only one in 120 people in the UK is a black male (whereas watching cbeebies one might think different) and men in general are over-represented on tv.

I don't think about that when listening to radio, but then Radio 4 is the wallpaper to my life...

the caribbean accent doesn't seem to have done sir trev any harm either...

i loooe sir trevs voice - though accent wise its pretty subtle.

his name is Neil Nunes and looks as his voice sounds

His name is Neil Noonan.

- why has this thread been resurrected when the question has already been answered.. two years ago?!