'Marilyn' Goes Underground

The people who run the subways in London, the Underground, are looking for a new voice to counter criticism that train announcements are irritating.

The voice of choice is soft but clear and gets commuter's attention without annoying anybody. It's a voice that sounds a bit like Marilyn Monroe's.

"We've been using focus groups to determine the sort of tone of voice that customers find most helpful and most friendly and the person who ran the focus groups gave the voices different nicknames," an Underground spokesman said.

"The one that the focus groups came up with as their preferred choice was one that had been nicknamed Marilyn Monroe. To be honest, it only sounded a little bit like her."

Picking the right voice and installing new prerecorded messages on the hundreds of trains is expected to take quite some time, the spokesman said.