Emma Clarke, the voice of the London Tube, was apparently fired after her employers discovered her website contained spoof announcement messages she’d created that were…er, slightly less mundane than the usual “Mind the gap.”
I suppose I can see the Underground’s point about not mocking your rather well-known employers, but come on! This is funny! Emma, please come to LA – we need you!
This reminds me of the occasional furor about funny announcements by Southwest Airlines flight attendants. Like when reminding passengers that they are not permitted to smoke on the plane, they invite smokers to move to the smoking lounge on the wing, where they can also watch the in-flight movie, “Gone With The Wind”.
I haven’t flown SWA in a while, but will be doing so later this week. I hope they’re still permitted to joke with the passengers; I could use a few laughs.
I can’t recall any specifics, but when I flew Southwest last in September, the attendant doing the announcing was definitely a joker, with some things bordering on ribald. No one took offense; everyone seemed to have a good time.
I feel for her, and wish the Underground folks could have a bit more of a sense of humor about the whole thing. This strikes me as one of those incidents where there could be a public show of support for her that might cause the bosses to back down and allow her to keep the job. Depends how much news time it gets in the UK, i guess.
LurkMeister, my wife and i flew from Manchester NH to Baltimore on Southwest last month, and the guy doing the pre-flight safety announcements had most of the plane in stitches. It was a full-on comedy routine lasting about three minutes. It wasn’t just what he said; he had a great voice and excellent delivery.
I really liked his remark about how it is a federal offense to disable the bathroom smoke detectors and webcams. And when telling everyone to make sure their luggage was fully under the seat in front, he told us that “all you should see when you look down is dirty blue carpet and your ugly shoes.” My wife was in tears by the end.
Emma Clark’s career seems to be a mirror image of mine.
I think her firing is an over-reaction.
On the SWA thing, I hate hate hate the jokes and singing. I travel a lot and I want to find my seat, read, maybe sleep and get off the plane. If the air crew are talking to me over the intercom, I assume it is to pass along important information, if not I wish they would be quiet.
Ah, yes, I remember the safety announcements. “If you’re with a child, or someone acting like a child, please place their oxygen mask on before putting on your own.”
madmonk28, I don’t remember any jokes and singing during the flight. At least not over the intercom. I do remember joking and flirting with one of the attendants during the flight… which reminds me that I want to make sure I get a seat near the front.
Flying Southwest a couple years ago, the flight attendant announced the upcoming landing with a song, which I can’t remember in its entirety, but which ended,
Marry one of us
and you’ll fly for free!
And I talked with a flight attendant whose mom had been a Southwest flight attendant back in the oooold days of hotpants and gogo boots, and she swore her mom once climbed up into the over-the-seat luggage compartment to greet the passengers when they opened the doors to stow their bags.
It’s a shame that the Tube operators have no sense of humor. Although it’s interesting that they pay the person who does their announcements. The DC Metro system last year had a contest for the next person to become the Voice of the Metro, and the winner got paid absolutely zilch. Her reward was, I guess, knowing everyone would hear her voice for several years to come. :rolleyes:
My favorite Southwest announcement: Thank you for flying Southwest. We hope you enjoyed your flight. If you did not enjoy your flight, thank you for flying Delta.
Is that the real reason?
From the Guardian article:
If you are travelling with a child, please put on your own mask before attending to your child. If you are travelling with two children, now is the time to choose which one you love the most.
Si
I’ve been on flights when they sang versions of “Hail to the Busdriver” etc. I used to fly from BWI to Little Rock and I’d notice it was more wacky on the flights leaving from Little Rock than on the flights from BWI.
I thought for a moment the story was saying that the messages had somehow actually been broadcast over the PA system at tube stations - in which case of course it would be appropriate to sack the person, but I dunno - it does seem a bit of an overreaction. Still, controversy sometimes has a way of working to the good for humourists - here’s hoping what she loses in transport voiceover work, she regains in radio or something.
At the moment things are a bit all over - Ms. Clarke is saying that the remarks she’d made that were apparantly disparaging towards the Underground were taken out of context, and given the way she’s talking about it, I can see how it might have happened. That, alas, doesn’t mean that she’s not backing an explaination into an embarassing faux pas, just that I’d be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in the absence of any other information.
The spoof messages, however, do seem to be the real problem for the Underground. I don’t think they’d have joked about having her contracts ‘delayed,’ if it were solely an issue of what she’d said in that interview to a single paper.
Alaska Air was another where the crew had a sense of humor during the announcements.
“We would like to remind you that our lavatories are equipped with smoke alarms and ejector seats, so if you do choose to smoke there we’d like to thank you right now for having flown Alaska Air.”
Flew Virgin Atlantic from Hong Kong this summer.
The announcer should have been a stand-up comedian. Seriously, he was that funny. The entire plane was howling with laughter.
I can’t remember much of it, but highlights include:
"Fasten the seatbelt by putting the belt around you, engaging the clasp, and tightening around your waist. And to be honest, if you don’t know how to do a seat belt up, you’ve got a lot more problems than airline safety.
"In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, when you’ve stopped screaming, place the mask over your nose and mouth. Try to breathe normally. Stop hyperventilating. STOP HYPERVENTILATING FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!
“If you have a child, please attend to your own mask before you attend to theirs. If you have two children, perhaps now is a good time to ask yourself ‘which one do I love the most?’”
When we landed:
“Thank you for flying with us this evening. Now you can tell all your friends that you spent a pleasant 12 hours with a Virgin, something you definitely can’t say with British Airways.”
Virgin companies are quite good. If you make a mistake and press the wrong key when navigating the menu system for Virgin Mobile in Australia, the recorded voice will say, “Are we a little tipsy?”
<weird Hugh Dennis voice>The NOW show?</whdv>
Sounds like their sort of humour.
goes back to watering his Sunny-D plant
“A spokesman for London Underground said . . .”
Note that the administrators of London Underground had to use a spokesman, rather than speak for themselves. That is because they are in fact a colony of giant naked mole rats, and as such, do not have a sense of humour, and tend to avoid interaction with the human public.
One of my favorite Southwest landing announcements:
“Southwest would like to be the first to welcome you to Hawaii! Unfortunately, we’re in Albuquerque, so welcome to Albuquerque.”