It’s not nice hearing your own voice

‘Do I really sound like that?’ is how people invariably respond when they hear a recording of their own voice. Or they used to, anyway. Your own voice was something you heard a lot but never actually heard from the outside. But in the age of voice memos, podcasts and TikToks, we are much more likely to have to hear our voices.

I recently read the audiobook of my new book, Gay Shame – all eight and a half hours of it – so I was confronted with vocal reality on a grand scale. I still sound fresh and flush in my own mind, so the obvious – that I sound old now, because I am old now – came as a surprise. I slid through life not acknowledging this until I heard my wheezy cracked pipe, replacing what were once lusty reeds.