Bleary-eyed passengers sleepwalking through their commutes on Manchester’s Metrolink tram network recently may have been in for a shock: in place of the usual recorded announcements was the distinctive drawl of Liam Gallagher, letting them know where their tram was off to and where it might be stopping next.
All this was a publicity stunt – an effective one, apparently, since I’m writing about it – to promote the Beyond the Music festival, which saw 100 artists perform at 17 grassroots venues across the city region. Normally I’d raise an eyebrow at claims that the idea of getting the ex-Oasis singer involved came from Andy Burnham himself; but having been at his mayoral campaign launch event back in 2017, with its Manchester tarts, eccles cakes and all-Madchester playlist (Elbow, Inspiral Carpets, Lisa Stansfield et al), I can actually sort of believe it.
I am less convinced by a spokesperson’s claim that Liam “was given the chance to choose his favourite line, but you’ll have to get on to a tram into the city to find out which it is”. For one thing, the BBC has ruined the surprise with its video coverage; for another, Gallagher was a millionaire many times over before the Ashton-under-Lyne branch ever opened – so, call me cynical, but I am not convinced he has ever taken that tram in his life.
Public transport announcements are part of the aural wallpaper of daily life: bland, ever-present, boring. Explorations of such things can appeal to those of a certain, nerdy mindset if only through their very ubiquity: a few months ago, a spreadsheet listing every one of ScotRail’s automated station announcements, with its warnings of boats colliding with bridges and cattle on the line, became an unlikely viral hit.
But they can also be hijacked by marketing teams through the simple expedient of replacing a deliberately anonymous voice with an unmistakable one. For many years, the distinctive, mid-Atlantic drawl of broadcaster Loyd Grossman used to direct visitors to Covent Garden tube station to the London Transport Museum, his “faaaaaavorite museum” (sure it was). In the autumn of 2014, a whole squad of actors with immediately recognisable voices – Stephen Fry, Barbara Windsor, Joanna Lumley – were to be heard telling tube passengers where to get off, before exhorting them to buy poppies; at stations near stadiums, footballers did the same.
Part of the appeal of such a marketing strategy must be the way it forces itself into your consciousness, making you listen by turning background noise into something more attention-grabbing (or, if you prefer, obnoxious). But part of it is also the fact that, as any social media manager who has ever desperately tried to make their boring tweets go viral will know, there’s just something delightful in a corporation eschewing the usual banalities and speaking in the voice of a human.
An announcer who livens up a boring journey with vignettes about each station will have more impact on passengers than the one who simply lists the next stop in a depressed exhale. This can go either way: searching the web for examples, I found a Thameslink driver who made a special announcement to a school party ending, “Olivia, daddy’s driving this train”, which is cute; and an LNER one who warned passengers, “The mother-in-law lives in Doncaster, a good reason not to get off”, which is not.
All this, of course, can backfire. You wouldn’t want to be diagnosed with a serious illness by a doctor who had dressed up as a Disney character for Children in Need; and you don’t want to hear that your connecting train has been cancelled, leaving you stranded in Crewe, in the voice of a local Love Island contestant. In the same way, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who appreciates being unexpectedly addressed by a train toilet, smugly reciting its hilarious list of things it would prefer you not to flush down it. Never mind my ex’s sweater, I would stick their entire wardrobe in there if it would shut your smug mouth for 30 seconds.
Speaking of exes, a guard once made up for the crime of evicting mine from the front seat of a DLR train in London – the one from which you can “drive” this automated transport – by allowing her to make the announcement that we were arriving into Bank. Considering this was, at least partly, a way of him not doing all his job, he made us both very happy. Whether the rest of the passengers felt the same, history does not record.
• Jonn Elledge is a journalist and author; read his newsletter here
