People want Sean Connery to read their email

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 28 February 2007 09:51

IT Industry - Market

If you could have your emails or text (TXT/SMS) messages read to you over the phone, which famous person's voice would you like to hear? When Avaya surveyed people about their communications habits earlier this month, Sean Connery was an easy winner.

John Cleese came a distant second.

We're not sure what to make of this apparent predilection for ageing Brits, other than to note that we generally find male voices more intelligible in noisy environments such as cars. But perhaps that's due to our attendance at a Motorhead concert rather than any deficiencies of the female voice.

Still, given some of the alternatives - Donald Trump, Borat and Simon Cowell - we'd go with the Scotsman too.

Interestingly, Connery and Cleese took the top spots regardless of the respondents' sex, although Connery did slightly better among women. Cleese, on the other hand, was much more popular among men than women.

It's not until we get to third place that we see any real difference between men and women, or between Australians and the US and UK. Internationally, Darth Vader took the spot, but only managed a tie with Angelina Jolie among women. The Tomb Raider star was sufficiently popular with Aussies to achieve an outright - if regional - third.

But what about respondents' propensity for taking part in conference calls in a state of (at least partial) undress? Read on, and all will be revealed...