From circus dancer to radio presenter, Emma Hignett’s path to becoming the capital’s iconic voice was full of lucky breaks.
She now celebrates 20 years as the voice of London’s buses, having also guided the Overground, Elizabeth Line, and River Bus.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Staindrop resident Emma Hignett becoming the voice of London’s buses.
Since then, she has become synonymous with most of the transport in the capital, providing the voice for its Overground railway lines, the Elizabeth Line and the River Bus.
Her journey towards becoming a voiceover artist is a series of happy coincidences that would lead to life as a radio presenter, interviewing the likes of Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones and the Spice Girls, a weather girl for Welsh Television, and, of course, the most famous voice in the capital.
Born in Yorkshire and raised in Lancashire, her first happy coincidence came after studying dance, acting and singing at performing arts school The Hammond, in Chester.
She said: “My first job as a dancer was touring Mexico with an Italian circus in 1988.
“That is what you did in those days – there were two ways of getting your Equity card, you either went and joined a circus in Mexico or go on the cruises.
“I went to Mexico to get my card.
“I went out with a troupe of 18 dancers, 17 of whom were southern. So, I went out with my beautiful Lancashire accent and came back with a southern accent.
“It was very fortunate. I didn’t think about it, it just happened.”
The accent developed over the nine months she was in Mexico.
The next happy coincidence started when she had a telephone conversation with her dad while she was studying in which he said, “I can see you reading the news on TV” which left a lingering thought about working on TV.
Emma said: “In my head I was going to dance until I could dance no longer and then I was going to television. Grand plans of a youngster.
“There was quite a lot of documented evidence and quite a lot of people got a start in television via radio, so I thought well I’ll start with radio.”
She started out doing amateur radio in London which led to a job doing traffic reports for various stations in the capital.
Her career in radio included a week co-hosting a show with Jerry Springer, and interviewing a variety of superstars.
She said: “For Brad Pitt I had literally seven minutes and they timed it. I had two pages of questions and I was the last person in.
“He had, I suspect, been asked the same questions over and over so he rattled through my two pages of questions really quickly.
“Which meant I had to improvise … actually that worked well because I’d seen the film, so I asked him if he’d ad-libbed in one part because it sounded so off the cuff.
“Joseph Fiennes was the same day, for the same film. It was a great interview but my producer’s battery died on his recording equipment half way through and we got none of it!”
Later, she co-hosted a morning radio show in Birmingham where the coincidence would materialise, and it involved a company producing weather reports for various television channels.
Emma said: “They were also launching a 24-hour weather service and so I literally phoned up one day and asked, ‘are you looking for presenters?’.
“He said, ‘what are you doing tomorrow, literally we are doing an audition’.
“There were three of us. There was a girl with a background in acting, there was a journalist covering the auditions and me.
“The journalist was pretty poor at doing the weather presenting, the actress acted presenting the weather, and there was me being me and I got the job.”
Thus, she became Wales’ weekend weather girl and would eventual lead to a move to the country.
The voiceover artist said: “Two years later this radio job comes up in Cardiff. I remember telling my agent, ‘it is ideal, I am already known in Cardiff’.
“It’s an absolutely fabulous place to live when you are young.”
She stayed with the station for five years before moving back up north, to take a job on a Darlington radio station. Sadly, it folded and she was made redundant but decided to remain in the area.
It was then that she was asked to do a demo for Transport for London’s buses.
Emma said: “I literally just spoke in my normal voice.
“TfL took 10 voices and tested 10 voices – five men and five women. They whittled it down to one man and one woman.
“There are various theories around it. Male voices are effective in giving instructions – so if you wanted somebody to evacuate a train quickly, a male voice is better.
“But they didn’t want that, they didn’t want something that was going to be intrusive.
“If you think about it, people will be on that same bus journey day-in-day-out – the majority of people do not need to know what the stop is.
“So they wanted a voice that was going to provide the combination of cutting through to those people who wanted it, whilst not antagonise those who didn’t need it.
“It can’t be too jolly, it can’t grate, it’s got to have that ability to go slightly under the radar when it needs to.”
After landing the job she was invited down to London to do hundreds of recordings for a trial for the 149 route that launched in January 2006, and it led to a number of other gigs for TfL.
This included doing recordings for the Overground trains while 39 weeks pregnant with her son Tom.
She continues to do updates for all the services, though these are now done in the comfort of a recording studio in her loft.
“Buildings come and go, bus stops get renamed, routes might get diverted, new routes, changes… I do still do regular updates for them, probably two or three times a month.
“I do apologies for things being late quite a lot.
“I have done a lot of delays and quite a lot of reasons for delays. There are a lot of reasons why delays happen in London,” she chuckled.
It has also led to other jobs.
Emma said: “I do the North East and south Yorkshire buses now so I try to make theirs more northern.
“They will say I sound terribly posh, but I try.
“Now if you ask me to speak into a microphone, I find it a lot harder to do it in a northern accent, which is my native accent, than I do to do it in a southern accent.”
Along with voiceover work, the businesswoman also runs a PR company with clients such as Thorpe Farm, Durham Christmas Festival and Age UK County Durham.
As part of this she feels it is important to engage in various business networks, including the one at Barnard Castle’s Enterprise House.
She also became involved with Teesdale Business Awards in various capacities including being a recipient of an award, sponsoring an award, and co-hosting the event at various times.
Emma said: “When you work on your own as I do, the one thing you miss is colleagues, that sharing of ideas and the challenge that comes from having colleagues around you.
“I think there is that element of community in the small businesses in this part of the country which is great.”
When not working, Emma still enjoys exercising her singing talents and is part of the Affinity Choir, a community rock choir.
She said: “I love it. Some people run to get that buzz – I think I get that buzz from singing. Also,
it is an incredibly social group of people.
“That is going from strength to strength and that is fun.”
Emma is philosophical about her voice being identified with people’s memories of visiting the capital, particularly international tourists.
She said: “I don’t think I am the most recognisable voice, if you put Stephen Fry next to mine, more people would know Stephen Fry.
“But my voice has become a big part of London I guess. I am quite chuffed about it – I am quite proud about it.
“It is quite nice to have a job that is unique, that you can talk about and people go ‘wow, is that really you’.
“But actually, nobody knows what I look like, so there is no fame with it, you are still quite private, but you have just got this quirky job, that’s quite good fun.”
