Nigel Planer, Voice of Grizzly Tales
The original BBC Radio 4 series
Series 1-6 and Special for Citv
The New Series for Nickelodeon UK
"Grizzly Tales has been a good first reading experience for most of the children I know, and I was giving the books as presents long before Jamie Rix and I started to record the series. It encourages children to read because there is a certain element of dare in it; "are you brave enough to read this? On your own? At night?"
The first readings were indeed for BBC radio, where I had been booked independently of Jamie's and my partnership, which the BBC were unaware of at the time. I assumed it must have come through Jamie, but in fact he was surprised when he found out that it was me. If the BBC had thought of me as the right person for the horrible tales then we knew from the very beginning that I was the man for the job of the series.
We created the character of the narrator so that the many different stories would have some kind of overall cohesion, like bookends. If I'd known we'd still be doing it now, ten years or more later, I think I'd have made the voice a little less gravelly and rough. Sometimes, I just end up in fits of coughs in the studio, and after a couple of days have a really sore throat! But it's fun having a character you can go back to again and again."
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