|
|
|
|
 Who is Dave Lamb? He is 40 and the unmistakable voice behind the classic British
television series Come Dine With Me. He has appeared in several
programes over the last decade, including ‘The  League of Gentlemen’,
‘Moving Wallpaper’, ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, ‘Armstrong and Miller’, and
‘Easterners’. But what does the actor and voice over artist really think
of the cult show that highlights dinner party disasters from across the
country? Viewers often cite the naration as the best part of Come Dine
With Me, but do people recognise the voice of Dave Lamb? Everyone tells
me my voice is different from what I do on the programme. It’s become
more and more camp and ridiculous… I get overexcited now. But if you
listen to the earlier episodes, it’s really quite flat and ‘normal’.
They, quite rightly, reined me in early on, because if you go from
nought to 60 straight away it’s a bit too much! So we’ve gradually
worked our way up. The difference between the early series and now is
marked. Many of the witty one liners have become classics, but are they
scripted? I read from a script, but I’m allowed to improvise around the
script. So I watch it, and if something occurs to me to say that’s not
on the script I just say it. And the producer will then either go
‘alright we’ll keep that’ or we go back and do what’s meant to be on the
page. I watch the edit for the first time, I sight read the script and
then do the voiceover, so I’m reacting as an audience member. I watch it
like a viewer, and that’s kind of the feel we go for. I never know
who’s going to win; I kind of discover it as it goes along. I’ll either
read the script or – because I’m watching and listening as I go along –
if I react differently, I’ll try something different and the producer
will either say ‘OK we’ll go with that’ or ‘get back in there and stop
swearing’ which is normally what happens! There’s some real filth on the
cutting room floor… It’s good fun, and if you can have a laugh doing
it, that’s part of the job really. So does Dave have any favourits from
the programes? I really warm to people; you really take an instant like
or dislike to people as you’re doing it. It’s a difficult one, because
you’ve got to be aware of what the viewers are going to be thinking and
you don’t want to go against that, so you don’t want to be nasty if no-one’s deserved it. Quite often, the producers have spent 5 days with
these people and some of them have got really hacked off with some of
these guys over the 5 days, so when they come to write the scripts at
the end, they’re already furious on day 1. So I come into it and go ‘why
are we so angry with this person, we don’t know who they are’! Or
sometimes I feel we can go for people when they’ve been lovely to them.
Contestants must take offence at your near the knuckle banter?Not that
I’ve been told of, but I do feel like they might protect me from things
like that! The producers might have had to wrestle with some angry
contestants on occasion, so they try to keep all that away from me. When
did Dave first get involved with the show?I just went for an audition;
they’d recorded a pilot and Channel 4 said the voiceover was a bit
formal and sensible, so they auditioned people to be a bit more light
hearted – without being too over the top. I think if I’d auditioned for
it with how I do it now, I wouldn’t have got the job. They would’ve gone
‘that’s far too big, you can’t do it like that’! But they offered it to
me and I’m really glad I took it. It’s a really watchable format. I
often miss my cues doing the voiceover just by watching it. It’s so easy
to get wrapped up in it. Is Dave Lamb a keen cook? No I’m not, I’m
rubbish! My wife is a qualified chef, so I’ve gone into my shell as a
chef since we’ve been married, because she really won’t hold back
criticising my food. The first thing I did was cook her a stroganoff –
first time we had a date – and she just literally had two mouthfuls and
went ‘no, er, I don’t think so’. So this is very cathartic, watching
other people cook nearly as badly as me.
|
|
|