[This article appeared in the Independent on Sunday on 28 December 2003. It is reproduced here without permission, as I have tried but failed to contact its author.] Notes from the Underground by Andrew Martin Filling in the Gap There was, I admit, a gap in my column on Underground gaps, as I was unable to find out any details about Peter Lodge, the man whose voice booms “Mind the Gap” on the Central Line at Bank, and on the Northern at Embankment and Waterloo. It prompted a Dr Chris Willis to write in, mentioning the fact that Peter Lodge is her father-in-law, and suggesting I call him. It was amazing to do so, and to hear those metallic tones only slightly quelled by a telephone line. By all means I could write about Mr Lodge, but he wanted to check the copy: “You see,” he said, “no one’s ever got the story quite right.” In the Sixties, Peter Lodge was a sound engineer running his own sound studios. These were in Bayswater, not Soho as might be expected, and when it was proposed to Michael Winner that one of his films might be mixed there, he exclaimed: “Bayswater! That’s halfway to the country,” so Mr Lodge was spared working on one of the Winner epics. His company did remix the first Crocodile Dundee, though, as well as working on various episodes of Emergency Ward 10, The Goodies, and much else. In 1968, or possibly 1969, Mr Lodge received a call from a Scotsman high up at AEG Telefunken. “I want to record just two sentences,” said the Scotsman. An actor was booked to do the job, and, on being warned it was only two sentences, he said: “That’s fine, it’ll be the standard fee of £50.” When the Scotsman turned up at Bayswater, he explained that Telefunken had won the contract to supply the equipment warning of gaps on the Tube. Hitherto, these had only been pointed out by any station staff happening to be around, but with the advent of digital recording, it became feasible to make announcements automatically. Telefunken were pioneers in digital, but at that stage the technology only allowed a few seconds to be recorded. That was fine, however, since that was all that was needed to record: “Mind The Gap. Stand clear of the closing doors.” Where this precise form of words came from, Mr Lodge can’t recall. It might have been the Scotsman or himself, or a combination of the two. Anyway, the actor said the words, and the job was done, but a few days later, Peter Lodge heard back from the actor’s agent. He would be wanting repeat fees. That actor, and the agent, would be multimillionaires by now if the request had been acceded to. But the Scotsman, according to Mr Lodge, said: “Not likely, with quite a few expletives along the way.” The warning would be re-recorded, and the Scotsman himself would say the words. But at the start of this second session, Mr Lodge tested the microphone levels by saying the two sentences, at which the Scotsman said: “That’s fine, I’ll take it.” What millions of Londoners have heard ever since, therefore, is a rehearsal, although the phrasing had been properly thought out: “We agreed that we must throw the word ‘Mind’,” recalls Peter, “really fire it up, so that it would reach the people in the carriages.” The announcements were put in place very quickly after the recording, and shortly after that, Peter Lodge took his children to Waterloo, and watched their faces as an incoming train triggered the warning. “Daddy, it’s you!” they exclaimed. Otherwise he has had very little feedback. When I told him that the Underground now made enormous sums every year from selling objects marked “Mind The Gap”, Mr Lodge said: “Really? One per cent of that would be nice.” He was only kidding. But it would be nice to think that the lawyers of Transport for London have just experienced a collective seizure.