Interesting Facts

According to linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer Disney films are dominated by men when it comes to dialogue. (Pocahontas, Mulan and The Little Mermaid were all named after the main female character, but that didn't help: In Pocahontas 76% of the dialogue was from the men, it was 77% in Mulan  and 68% in The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast had male characters speaking 71% of the time, while in Aladdin it was 90%. Early Disney films such as Snow White had fewer speaking roles but spread them equally between male and female characters, and in Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty women seemingly had more dialogue than men. To be fair it's not just Disney. In the film The Avengers, none of the female characters talked to each other at any point.)

The world’s most famous clock, The Tower Clock, which houses Big Ben, checks its time with the BT Speaking Clock. (Many other major organisations have permanent feeds of the clock from BT into their private internal phone systems so employees can check the time without making an outside call. Just as well Big Ben doesn't speak though. "Bong bong b-o-n-g!!!!!")

There have only ever been three voices for the BT Speaking Clock, apart from a two week period in March 2003 when Lenny Henry, a famous British comedian, did a special version of the Speaking Clock in aid of Comic Relief. (A London telephonist, Jane Cain was the first voice in 1936 and lasted until 1963. She was followed by a Miss Pat Simmons, a supervisor in a London telephone exchange, she was the second voice from 1963 until 1984. The present voice, belongs to Brian Cobby (73) who was an assistant supervisor at Withdean exchange in Brighton. He became the first male voice at 11 am on 2nd April 1985. Brian Cobby, an actor by profession before he joined BT, was selected from 12 finalists in BT’s Golden Voice competition, on 5th December 1984.) !Note - The speaking clock is a telephone service provided by British Telecom where you dial 123 to hear a recording of the time, but be warned, you will be charged 31p for doing so.

The BT Speaking Clock has been ticking 24-hours a day, seven days a week since 24th July 1936. (If you work it out, this is around 67 years, which is more than 24,000 days, more than 586,000 hours or 35 million minutes!  And that, I think you will agree, is a long time.  (Oh, and if you're reading this beyond 2005, it's been even longer.))