Zeb Soanes

Near the end of his degree course Soanes appeared on a BBC Local Radio station, promoting a charity improvised comedy show in which he was taking part. He was spotted by one of the presenters and a few days later Soanes was called back to improvise some impersonations live on air.[5]

Soanes was a presentation announcer for the television channels BBC One and BBC Two. His was the first voice of BBC Four when the digital channel launched in March 2002 and was the channel's sole announcer for the first ten months.[2][3] He left BBC television in February 2003 and took up a position with BBC Radio 4 on 9 February 2003.[6]

In 2001, he began reading the Shipping Forecast, a weather report for the seas around the British Isles, which is broadcast four times a day on BBC Radio 4. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics he was asked to read the shipping forecast to a worldwide audience of over a billion.[7] Describing the forecast in 2012, Soanes said: "To the non-nautical, [it] is a nightly litany of the sea... It reinforces a sense of being islanders with a proud seafaring past. Whilst the listener is safely tucked-up in their bed, they can imagine small fishing-boats bobbing about at Plymouth or 170ft waves crashing against Rockall."[8]

Writing in the foreword to the 2020 The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book, published by BBC Books, he explained: "The forecast gives the wind direction and force, atmospheric pressure, visibility and the state of the sea. It is a nightly litany with a rhythm and indefinable poetry that have made it popular with millions of people who never have cause to put to sea and have little idea what it actually means; a reminder that whilst you're tucked-up safely under the bedclothes, far out over the waves it’s a wilder and more dangerous picture, one that captures the imagination and leads it into uncharted waters whilst you sleep. Dependable, reassuring and never hurried, in these especially uncertain times The Shipping Forecast is a still small voice of calm across the airwaves."[9]

Soanes has been a newsreader for Radio 4's Today, PM and the Six O’Clock News. He is a regular newsreader on The News Quiz, joining the programme under the chairmanship of Sandi Toksvig, then Miles Jupp and in 2013 accompanied the programme on its first visit to the Edinburgh Festival.[7][10]

He acted with Toby Jones in the radio drama Beautiful Dreamers and has reported for BBC Radio's long-running series From Our Own Correspondent. He has also presented BBC Radio 3’s Saturday Classics, the first edition of which consisted of three hours of favourite sea-inspired music.[7] In December 2010, Radio Times magazine placed Soanes in the list of the seven most recognisable voices in Britain.[11] He voiced a series of documentaries for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, the launch of Sherlock in the US and is in Mayday, a short film with Juliet Stevenson.[7]

Author Francesca Simon, creator of Horrid Henry, featured Soanes as the newsreader in The Lost Gods, her 2013 book for older children.[7]

In a July 2015 poll of favourite radio voices in The Sunday Times, Soanes was voted as the favourite male voice. His voice was described, by the paper's radio critic Paul Donovan, as smoother than that of the favourite female Jane Garvey and as "evoking an earlier, more formal BBC".[12][13] In September 2015, he played a vintage radio announcer in the BBC Radio 4 drama Dead Girls Tell No Tales.[14]

In April 2016 Soanes played Derek Nimmo in the radio drama All Mouth and Trousers, by Mark Burgess, the story behind the making of the television comedy series All Gas and Gaiters.[15] The reviews for the programme were generally positive with The Sunday Times' Paul Donovan saying "Zeb Soanes is terrific as its star, Derek Nimmo" and Gillian Reynolds of The Sunday Telegraph commenting "Zeb Soanes makes an ace Derek Nimmo."[16] Also in 2016 he played the sinister librarian in a Doctor Who audio adventure called The Unbound Universe with David Warner as The Doctor.[17]

At Christmas 2018 Soanes appeared as part of the team for the University of East Anglia on BBC's Christmas University Challenge.[18] The team lost to University of Westminster by 100 points to 130.[19]

Soanes returned to BBC Four television in August 2006 as a presenter for the BBC Proms. In 2017 he presented a television tribute to The Proms on the occasion of the First Night of The Proms, in sepia tone in the style of a vintage programme. The sequence included photographs, radio and TV footage from the history of the concerts, with Soanes partly presenting in Received Pronunciation, fitting the style of early BBC programmes.[20]

On 24 November 2013 he took the role of God in a production of Noye's Fludde for BBC Radio 3, as part of the station's celebration of Benjamin Britten's centenary.[21]

In November 2014 he participated in a concert by the vocal ensemble Opus Anglicanum at Wells Cathedral, featuring the poetry of George Herbert[22] and has appeared in numerous productions with them since.[23] The ensemble has touring an entire reading of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, set to music by Lynne Plowman.

In 2016 Soanes was narrator for The Snowman by the Brandenburg Sinfonia at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with Andrew Earis conductor. In 2019 the church commissioned him to rewrite the libretto for Vaughan Williams' 1958 nativity pageant, The First Nowell, presented as a charity gala casting BBC colleagues Dame Jenni Murray as God and Evan Davis as a Wise Man.[24]

He was narrator for Peter and the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood at the Wimbledon International Music Festival, with Leo Geyer conductor. The Daily Telegraph has described Soanes as "the go-to person for music narration, specialising in children's concerts". Andrew Baker, son of broadcaster Richard Baker, has said "It is unusual .... for newsreaders to come from a non-journalistic background, but this seems to have ben Zeb's path, just as it was my father's, so the state school, university, actor, BBC trajectory is uncannily similar.[25]

In March 2017 Soanes appeared, alongside Carole Boyd, in a new recording of Façade by William Walton and Edith Sitwell, produced by Andrew Keener.[26] Christine Labroche, of concertoNet.com said of the recording: "These two celebrated voices chant the strange poems of Edith Sitwell with an infallible rhythm and a perfect, stretched or swift diction."[27] Andrew Baker also praised Soanes for the way he had performed Façade by William Walton: "My father regarded Façade as the pinnacle of the narrator's art, a hugely enjoyable challenge, and a celebration of clarity, breathing, projection and timing. Zeb has all of these attributes, and it's always a pleasure to hear him at work."[25]

On Twelfth Night, 5th January 2021, he appeared in a YouTube video with The King's Singers performing John Julius Norwich's humorous correspondence The Twelve Days of Christmas surrounding the gifts given in the traditional carol.[28]

• Gaspard the Fox. Illustrated by James Mayhew. Graffeg Limited. May 2018. ISBN 978-1912213542.
• Gaspard: Best in Show. Illustrated by James Mayhew. Graffeg Limited. August 2019. ISBN 978-1912654673.
• Gaspard's Foxtrot. Illustrated by James Mayhew. Graffeg Limited. March 2021. ISBN 978-1913134808.