[Chris]

Chris Moyles' voice is the first of the celebrity climbers to go live on the BT Speaking Clock. BT announced that the Speaking Clock will help fundraise for Comic Relief by using different celebrity voices between February 3 to March 23, 2009. Five of the Red Nose Day celebrities that are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro will share the time-keeping duties over the next two months.

The fun starts at 08.00 on Tuesday 3 February. When callers dial 123 they will be given an accurate time check by celebrities, including: Girls Aloud’s Cheryl Cole and Kimberley Walsh, fellow popstar, Gary Barlow and presenters, Chris Moyles and Fearne Cotton.

Each celebrity will replace the ‘pips’ with their own special Comic Relief sound, ranging from kisses, raspberries and piano chords in a bid to Do Something Funny for Money. And as if that wasn’t enough, there’ll be a special guest voice featuring in the run up to Red Nose Day on Friday 13 March but you’ll have to dial 123 to find out who it is.

Chris, with his raspberry blowing, will be on for the first 24-hours and then it will switch to Gary Barlow for Wednesday.

Fearne Cotton is due to take the mantle of Speaking Clock on Friday – and perhaps a lot of Radio One listeners will get quite excited by her version of the pips (which features her blowing kisses!).

One of the ways that BT is aiming to raise more than £300,000 for Comic Relief is by donating 10 pence per call from a BT fixed line in the UK that the BT Speaking Clock receives during this fundraising period. The only other previous Comic Relief voice on the Speaking Clock was Lenny Henry back in 2003, which helped to raise around £200,000.

If you click through to the comments you'll find a bunch of speaking-clock facts!

[Chris]

Q: How many calls does the BT Speaking Clock receive each year?

A: With around 60 million calls each year, the BT Speaking Clock remains an incredibly popular way to check the time.


Q: How accurate is the BT Speaking Clock?

A: The accuracy of the BT Speaking Clock is within five thousandths of a second. Even when Chris and the other celebrities are voicing it.


Q: How long has the Speaking Clock been going?

A: The BT Speaking Clock has been ticking 24-hours a day, seven days a week since July 24, 1936 – which is 73 years, more than 26,000 days, more than 630,000 hours or 38 million minutes!


Q: How many people have recorded the voice for the Speaking Clock?

A: In its 73-year history, only a very small number of people have had the privilege of being the voice of the Speaking Clock. There have been four “permanent” voices as follows:

- A telephonist, Miss Jane Cain was the first voice in July 1936 and lasted until 1963.

- Miss Pat Simmons, a supervisor in a London telephone exchange became the second voice from 1963 until 1985.

- rian Cobby of Withdean exchange, Brighton, became the first male voice in 1985. Brian, an actor by profession before he joined BT, was selected from 12 finalists in BT’s Golden Voice competition, on December 5, 1984. (Earlier in his career, he recorded the “5-4-3-2-1… Thunderbirds are go!” for the theme tune to Gerry Anderson’s TV series!)

- Sara Mendes Da Costa, an author and voice recording artist from Brighton, won a competition that BT ran with BBC Children in Need to find a member of the public to become the new “permanent” voice of the Speaking Clock, while raising funds for the charity. She has been the voice of the Speaking Clock since April 02, 2007 and will continue to provide the announcements after this Red Nose Day initiative.

There have been three "temporary voices" in the last six years. These are as follows:

- Lenny Henry helped BT raise £200,000 for Red Nose Day 2003 when he provided the voice of the Speaking Clock for two weeks in March 2003;

- 12-year old Alicia Rolands from Scotland won the chance to be the voice of the Speaking Clock in October 2003, raising money and awareness for ChildLine and the importance of listening to children and young people;

- Tinkerbell, became the temporary voice of the Speaking Clock between October 2008 – January 2009, as part of a Disney sponsorship campaign to promote a DVD based on the cartoon character.


Q: What did people do before the Speaking Clock was invented if they wanted a time check?

A: They rang the operator and asked her the time by the exchange clock on the wall, but this was not precise to the second, nor could the exchange always answer just when the customer wanted. The first genuine speaking clock machine was introduced in the USA in 1927, coming to Paris in 1933, The Hague in 1934 and Switzerland in 1935. But an automatic time service (of a Heath-Robinson kind) had been available to telephone users in San Francisco since the late 19th century; by listening for to an observatory clock at least a minute and decoding clicks and single and double buzzes against some detailed instructions you could set a pocket watch-but it helped if you already knew more or less what the time was.

The original Speaking Clock message was recorded and replayed rather like the optical sound track of a film and the equipment represented the state of the art of current technology in those days. This lasted until 1963, when it was replaced by more modern recording technology, using a magnetic drum. It gave way to the present digital system in 1984 and this has no moving parts at all.

With a built-in crystal oscillator and microprocessor logic control, the complete apparatus is made of solid-state microchips and occupies no more shelf space than a small suitcase does. Contrast that with the array of motors, glass discs, photocells and valves of the original Speaking Clock back in 1936 – it took up most of the floorspace of a small room!

[S4B]

Please tell me someone set you those facts or you googled.

[TIAL]

Why did I just read all of that?