Listen. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Listen.

Ha, sorry. Been watching a lot of films lately.

I've always been told I have a good voice. Great for radio, they say. Trouble was, it never sounded right to me. You know when people tape themselves and listen back to it, it sounds wrong, recognisably you but kind of alien. I know, I know it's something to do with it bouncing around inside your head.

Anyway, with me it's the opposite: I'm happy the sound of my voice when it's recorded, but the sound in my head sets my teeth on edge. I used to avoid talking whenever I could, but of course this wasn't very practical.
I started recording common phrases and tried to get by in telephone conversations by 'playing' them at appropriate points. It worked OK, so long as you didn't mind sounding like a robot.

Mind you, it got me thinking, I'd seen films where they got people to record lots of words and then they synthesised their voice and replaced them with robots. No, no, I didn't want to be replaced by a robot, I just thought I might be able to make some kind of voice synthesiser, and here I am, rabbiting away on it, neat huh?

(Text taken from transcript of an interview with Test Subject 666 from Ana's time in residence at the Berners-Lee Research Facility)