‘You should be a voice actor’

I had heard this so many times in my life but it took a TV quiz show to make me listen to that little voice in my head that said ‘ Yes, you should’.

I was sitting in Cash Trapped studio in 2017 when the host, Bradley Walsh, and the producer both stopped to comment on my voice. Clear, confident, easy to listen to. It wasn't the first time I'd heard it — but this time these were professionals who were saying it and this time I took notice.

I'd been hearing some version of that comment since I was a child. In infant school in the '70s, teachers picked out my clear, confident speaking voice and I was often the one asked to narrate assemblies and stage productions. Maths and science were never my strong suit — but speech was. I just didn't know that my voice could be the foundation for a career.

So life went on. I spent years working in the equestrian world, then in animal welfare, and then retrained and ran my own beauty therapy business for over two decades. Outside of work I found a way to develop my creative side by joining my local drama group and appeared in many plays and stage productions - from Bella Manningham in Gaslight to The Wicked Queen in Snow White. That is the beauty of local theatre of course, the variety of roles and the experience you can gain.

Much as I loved my beauty business, it is a very physical job and after twenty years of waxing, back massages and pedicures I started to wonder what other career I could pursue.

Then came Cash Trapped, an ITV quiz show hosted by Bradley Walsh. What fun that was, filming at Emstree studios, meeting Brad and trawling my mind for random trivia knowledge to answer quicker than the rest.

And that is exactly what I did. I won £12,000 and on the train home to Shropshire I thought of what this unexpected cash to do for me. Everything Brad and producer had said about my voice played in my mind and I decided to find out where it could actually take me.

I threw myself in: training with Gary Terzza, investing in proper equipment, and building a home studio I nicknamed The Quiet Room. That was the real starting point.