"Speak clearly, if you speak at all...."

After chronicling Miss Safe's untimely dip in a Birmingham canal (previous post), I happened to catch a television interview in which she described the incident.

Watching it, I was struck by the fact that, though she is clearly articulate and intelligent, her speaking voice was surprisingly flat, nasal and undeveloped. The same, of course, applies to much of the population these days - since public recital fell out of fashion in most of Britain's classrooms, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of speech in schools - but one might have thought a radio newsreader would prove an exception.

Still, I shouldn't be too surprised. It's something I've noticed on several recent car journeys; local news and traffic reports suggest that a good, clear speaking voice is fairly low on the list of priorities when choosing radio presenters.

I can see why it might not be deemed important for the actual entertainment broadcasts; Jeremy Clarkson once memorably described local radio DJs as sounding 'as if they're talking to you while someone is pushing Harpic up their nostrils with an electric toothbrush' in the hope of sounding wacky enough to attract the attention of any TV talent scouts who might be listening.

But the news and travel, the bit that's important to the thousands of motorists passing through the area, that should surely be delivered, if not in flawless Received Pronunciation, at least clearly enough to be understood by drivers over the noise of a car.

Instead, traffic announcers slur their words and mumble their script or - in the recent case of one female on a London station - giggle uncontrollably about something the DJ said and thus render half the information utterly incomprehensible; annoying if you're listening at home or in the office but downright infuriating if those details included the cause of the tailback you've just joined on the M25.

One traffic news presenter employed by an East Anglian radio station even has a definite lisp. While I'm all in favour of equal opportunities, I cannot imagine any circumstances that would make him the best possible candidate to read out information concerning Ipswich, Felixstowe and southern Suffolk, particularly in a context where road safety is concerned.

Perhaps it is all about equal opportunities; maybe these are the first tiny steps towards the dystopia of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's 'Harrison Bergeron', set in a world where the US Handicapper General ensures that everyone is 'equal every which way':

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen."

Or perhaps we have reached a point beyond irony, where radio presenters are chosen on the basis of how good they will look in the station's publicity shots and web pages rather than on the sound that will go out over the airwaves. Even on the outer fringes of celebrity, image, these days, is all.

Of course, I could be wrong; Miss Safe may merely have been developing a cold following her involuntary immersion or the studio microphones may have malfunctioned, but it does seem to me that the dulcet tones of the BBC's Charlotte Green and her like are gradually being replaced across the board by voices that lack clarity, resonance and that indefinable quality that makes them pleasant to hear and easy to understand.