Audio: McGowan praises calmness of Radio 4 announcers

Two of the best known Radio 4 announcers, Harriet Cass and Charlotte Green, have announced that they will be hanging up their headphones next year.

The comedian Alistair McGowan, of the Radio 4 sitcom Continuity, said that listeners feel they "know continuity people... they guide us through our lives."

He praised the warmth and the calmness that both announcers provide.

"They don't give you too much drama and make you feel that everything is all right with the world," he told Shaun Ley on The World at One.

Celebrating Radio 4's continuity announcers

Their work normally goes unremarked - but Alistair McGowan's new radio comedy, Continuity, focuses on the voices who hold R4 together.

Reading aloud for a few seconds every half-hour might seem like a cushy job - but this new sitcom by Hugh Rycroft imagines a world of pain behind the sturdy vowels of a Radio 4 continuity announcer. Alistair McGowan plays the announcer who leads a lonely professional life in the booth, away from his wife and kids, mulling things over between stints at the mic.