From the Radio Times - February 3rd 2009

I've been feeling a lot like Martin Jarvis this week. I even had a touch of the Miriam Margoyles. M&M, you see, are famed in the world of audiobooks for their silver tongues, golden modulations and dulcet delivery

Martin is the acknowledged Don of the Narrators. Actually, Don isn't a terribly good analogy here as MJ, brilliant as he is, probably hasn't done that many Grishams, Puzos or Baldaccis. He is the "go-to-guy", though, for Wodehouse and Just William and just about anything warm, nostalgic and sweetly English.

Audiobooks, once the specialist preserve of the visually impaired, are a boom industry, thanks to their popularity as in-car entertainment and the advent of MP3 players, with both iTunes and Audible offering quick and easy downloads. According to one breathlessly enthusiastic website, one of the great advantages of audiobooks is that "you can listen to them in the dark". I hadn't really noticed that nightfall interfered that much with my reading, what with electric lights and such, but hey, I love audiobooks, so I was dead excited to be asked to narrate the forthcoming version of my own book, Pies and Prejudice.

I don't know what it's like for Miriam and Martin, but for me it meant spending two days in a small, neat studio on a street corner in Warrington. We recorded in eye- and bladder-friendly one-and-a-half-hour chunks; essential, if, like me, you've got through about 18 pints of tea. (I've never drunk cold water "on the job" since Clive James told me it makes you sound like a duck.)

It was a strange experience. Essentially, you're devouring a book in one intense, totally immersed, two day sitting. Abridging means that a good third, maybe half of the book will be lost, but even so, you wouldn't normally take in a book like this, or read it aloud to strangers who'll occasionally politely stop you and say, "You're on the edge of a frog, darling, have a drink." Or, "I think we got a hint of a burp on Doncaster."

The taxi driver taking me back to the BBC asked what I'd been doing and I told him. "Oh, was it for blind people?" he replied, so I guess the audiobook still has some way to go to be as accepted as the print version, but I'm a convert. And I got to say "End of Disc One". And of course, when night falls, what else are you going to do?