The Voice of V

Over lunch at the BTP today, vincel mentioned his bemusement over Hugo Weaving's peculiar accent in V for Vendetta, which, he asserted, sounded very like Lord Winston of Hammersmith.

Well, the time puzzlement is at an end, for Weaving has demystified his inspiration in an interview:

My voice is a weird mixture of Australian sounds and some English sounds. All these characters (in the film) are English so I had to get rid of my Australian-ness. V is a very theatrical character - when he first meets Evey he was a humble vaudevillian veteran. So I thought of him as an actor, that was his profession before he was thrown in the clink.

So, there you go. A Shakespearean actor, not a fertility expert. Phew.

Reverential thoughts

Today's Guardian features an interesting interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury which, to my admitted atheist mind, does him a lot of favours. He comes across as a thoughtful, undogmatic guy who's not terribly interested in publicity for it's own sake and who's not willing to speak out on stuff unless he thinks it's really going to make a difference. Like I said, interesting.