Peter Dickson

Peter Dickson is a Northern Irish voice-over artist. After spending a period working on hospital radio, he became a newsreader at BBC Northern Ireland and worked for Good Morning Ulster. After tiring of covering The Troubles, he moved to BBC Radio 2 in London, spending ten years there before going freelance. He is best known for announcing The X Factor, though has also announced various other talent shows and game shows and the channel E4.

Life and career Peter Dickson was born in Knock, Belfast to a father who had a clerical job at Harland & Wolff and a mother, he attended Belfast Royal Academy, where he sat A-levels in geology, physics, and geography. He moved to Queen's University Belfast in 1975, where he met his future wife; he graduated in 1979, having written his thesis on childhood memory development.

Dickson became a newsreader at BBC Northern Ireland, where he worked on Good Morning Ulster. however, he has stated that he got the job while studying at university. He left the BBC in 1992 to go freelance; Dickson began his voiceover career after providing voices for Steve Wright's radio show, for which he would create characters,

Dickson began providing a bombastic voiceover for The X Factor in 2004, where his job was to introduce the contestants to the stage and to shout "It's time to face the music". His pronunciation of the name of one series six contestant, Rachel Adedeji, became especially popular. Writing in July 2015, The Independent wrote that Dickson's voiceover was integral to the series' success and that his "over-enunciation of commonplace syllables lent the show a pomp and pageantry which it could never have earned otherwise".

Dickson took over the voiceover for E4 in 2006 following the death of Patrick Allen. and Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice, a parody of talent shows such as The X Factor. He stated in his 2020 autobiography Voiceover Man that The X Factors creator Simon Cowell had been initially annoyed by Dickson's involvement in the latter but cooled after seeing how popular the show was with viewers. As a member of Peter Dickson & The Shakettes, he released the August 2010 single "Shake It", a promotional vehicle for the milkshake bar Shakeaway. Around this time, a different Peter Dickson bought the firm.

In 2011, Dickson provided the voiceover for a Staffordshire University student's masters dissertation on the requirements of successful comedians and his own app, Peter Dickson's Pocket Announcer. Around this time, he was seeking employment as an announcer for movie trailers in Los Angeles. In 2013, he and his friend Hugh Edwards co-founded Gravy for the Brain, a training academy based in Banbury. The following year, Dickson produced a relaxation tape for use in a Buttery Brown Monk sketch and appeared on the BBC One Northern Ireland panel show Monumental.

By July 2015, Dickson's voice had become synonymous with The X Factor and he had announced Britain's Got Talent, Family Fortunes, All Star Mr & Mrs, He left The X Factor that month but returned for that year's live finals, In 2017, he played a disgruntled phone-in caller on John Cleese Presents...; by April 2018, he had narrated 100 television shows and 30,000 adverts. and Joe Lycett.

Works

Filmography

Singles YearTitleCreditRef2009"What a Bunch of Bankers"Voiceoverman & The Credit Crunchers 2010"Shake It"Peter Dickson & The Shakettes