The former PM’s high earnings have been partly attributed to the way he speaks. But I’ll take Bill Paterson or Maya Angelou’s sonorous tones over the voice of privilege any day
Why does Boris Johnson command stupid money for public speaking? In February he reported a £2.5m advance; that seems awfully steep for 20 minutes of “Caecilius est in Peppa Pig World”. It’s a fair, indeed pressing, question posed by the Financial Times recently. I would happily pay a significant sum – all the money I spend on takeaways in a year, say, with the attendant sacrifice that involves for a reluctant cook – never to see or hear him again.
The journalist Janan Ganesh concluded that it’s partly Johnson’s voice: “Beautiful … deep and textured, raspy without crossing into sibilance”. I forced myself to listen to a little of it, and, OK, it’s deeper than I remembered, but he sounds slightly congested to me, like he needs to lay off the Daylesford cheese. I understand the point, however. It’s a voice redolent both of a more lighthearted, Wodehousian time and, if you’re truly deluded, the Churchillian doggedness to which he aspires.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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