People / first bus
Meet the voice of the new metrobus announcements
Fran Edwards is already a much-loved character among First Bus staff. She has worked as a receptionist at First’s depot in Lawrence Hill for more than a decade and knows most of the company’s staff from drivers to the finance team by name.
If you have taken a journey on the new m1 metrobus route, you will have heard Fran’s warm Bristolian burr making the announcements before each stop from Hengrove to Cribbs Causeway.
She thought it was a joke when originally asked to provide her voice to the new vehicles, but a week afterwards she was eventually persuaded and later took an hour and half recording the announcements for the pink and grey m1 buses.
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“It was so cringey hearing my voice on the bus,” Fran told Bristol24/7 during a recent lunchbreak.
“‘Oh gosh'”, I thought, do I really sound like that!”
Fifty-seven-year-old Fran lives in Hanham with her husband and has three daughters and four grandchildren, who she is taking on the m1 for the first time this weekend.
“They will probably laugh. You know what children are like, very honest and very brutal! But I don’t mind. It’s fun!”
Fran says that a few friends and colleagues have already come up to her since the m1 service launched at the start of this month to ask if it was her voice.
She has also heard that a few people have begun to call her voice Vicky, after the Little Britain character Vicky Pollard.
“I’m proud of my Bristolian accent,” said Fran, who was born inside her parents’ former home in St Werburgh’s Park in St Werburgh’s, and got married in the former St Werburgh’s church on Mina Road that is now a climbing centre.
“We don’t want to lose the Bristolian accent. I just don’t like listening to my own voice!”
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