Blog Articles

What I learned from my first VO On March 7th 2017 I got on a flight to Atlanta, Georgia. My old office, the plane, was taking me to my new office. I’m was on my way to VO Atlanta, the largest conference in the Voice industry organised by Gerald Griffith. I was heading to 4 days of learning, building relationships and working hard to be all I can be! I was excited and apprehensive, keen and shy, confident and nervous. But overall, so full of passion! Have you ever found your calling? Have you ever started fulfilling your old day dreams? It fills you with an energy so overwhelming, it motivates all your movements and sparks newer and more daring day I was intimidated, I’ll be honest. So many talented people in one room who all knew each other! I’ve never been a...

It’s not really a question I’ve asked myself before, it’s not something I have ever wondered if I’ve had before. Success to me was something that happened to other people who had the big jobs, they had ambition and were in control of their lives, and for so long I’ve been controlled by a corporation and made to feel like I gave up my right to success in exchange for having an awesome time drinking cocktails with people I just met next to a pool in some exotic country. And it was fun! And fine for a while. But for a few years I had been feeling discontent. I lacked success and purpose and felt a little lost. I still didn’t feel like I had the ability to go it alone and make a path of my own. So that was my first success of 2016. Realising this. One of my successes that...

As airline crew, fatigue is something I had lived with since I was 21. 14 years of falling asleep in mid sentence, sleeping for 15 hours, getting up to eat all the food I could find before I fell back to sleep on the couch. Or just simply getting to my hotel after a long flight and having a fully dressed face down nap on the bed. You haven’t known sleep rage until you’re 10 hours into your flight, it’s 5am, you’ve not slept for 35 hours and someone is screaming at you because they don’t like cheese and that’s all you have for the breakfast choice. The look of utter exhaustion after a long LA flight…… God knows how Damon fell in love with me because for the first 6 months of our dating I kept falling asleep mid dinner. Though he did have fun instagramming it…… (the...

When you’re watching a movie or tv show and you’re absorbed in the atmosphere, you can thank a room full of people grunting, cheering, screaming and trying to get their lips to match the much better paid actress and do her breaths. This week I have been learning about the invisible world of Since leaving Virgin, I have been absorbing every piece of information about being a successful Voice Actor. I’ve attended seminars, listened to webinars, taken part in some amazing courses led by vocal legends like Dian Perry and Yvonne Morley. But a few weeks ago, my new voice pal Gwen mentioned she was taking an ADR course at the Louis Elman Academy at Warner Bros De Lane Lea studios. I hadn’t heard of ADR, I’d done a day of it for Dangerfield at the BBC back in the 90’s. I...

The featured image today came from a lovely friend of mine in a card she gave me to celebrate my redundancy. Today I handed my uniform back into the headquarters at Virgin Atlantic, officially ending my 14 year stint at being Air Hostess Ally. I’ve been this Ally for such a long time that she also has several different versions of her. From ‘brand new crew Ally’, to ‘pretend to like snowboarding Ally, to ‘why do people keep throwing up on me Ally?’, to ‘passive aggressive because I hate the general public Ally’. She has had her good and bad moments and now is the time to find the next version of me. And it appears it has been secretly stressing me out. I have sleptwalked since I was a little girl. I used to go downstairs in my Lady and the Tramp pyjamas at 7 years old...

Today is the first day of the rest of my Actually yesterday was…. but I was too tired to start writing about it. Yesterday, I landed at London Heathrow airport on my last ever flight as Virgin Atlantic cabin crew. I’ve been flying around the world for the last 14 years and this year I was given the chance to take redundancy from my role as a cabin service supervisor and follow my dreams to be a Voice Actor. It was a huge decision. I’m 35 years old and have gotten quite used to earning a regular wage! And it wasn’t a bad life… I got to stay in some lovely hotels (and some not so lovely ones) and meet some lovely people (and some not so lovely ones). I was able to tick off many bucket list items that I could never have achieved had I not taken the job with Virgin in...

When I was leading up to my last days as a full time corporate employee, there were many things I was looking forward to as a lady of somewhat leisure. I was going to go to yoga every day. The house would be spotless and I’d have the long awaited clear up of all the useless stuff I’d accumulated in my house. Damon and I would take long leisurely lunches and I’d be visiting all my friends and family that I’d neglected whilst flying around the world. I was wrong. I completely blame my positive mental attitude that I would immediately get voice over work because that is exactly what has happened and it’s a big one! I have been lucky enough to bag my first audiobook, a psychological thriller by the author of The Optician’s Wife, Betsy Reavley. A fantastic novel that I...