Are Voiceover Artists ever given ridiculous direction?

Following a previous blog about bizarre vocal direction for voiceovers here are some more tales from voice artists, producers and engineers to, hopefully, make you smile.

'I know this is 60 seconds of copy and we need it to be a 30 but can you still sound relaxed and leisurely?'

'The funniest, most absurd, or ridiculous voice over direction I ever received was for a cold product. I had to sneeze and the end of the copy, I sneezed a few times and the direction I received was make it 'wetter'. Then the creative said make it more 'Living roomy and wetter.'

'the producer said to me 'No, the character you are playing is not British. She's English. You know, from England!'

'I was producing a session recently for a major New York agency where the 'creatives' felt that the Voice wasn't making the tagline we were recording sound 'purple' enough... it was for a well-known soft drink. They kept saying 'It just doesn't sound purple to us, and blackcurrants are purple, right?'

'It was taking hours to do a job that should have taken minutes. The Voiceover Artist was stressed, the Creatives were stressed. It was a bad atmosphere. As the Engineer, I told them all to take a break and go outside the control room. Then I found an early take that was fine, chopped it out and cleaned it up. I then called them all back in to the studio, told them I'd 'processed' it with some 'special plugins' and time expanded it here and there. They all loved it. Job done.

A director told the voiceover artist to 'imagine you are in a jungle... how would you speak there?' (The character was supposed to be... 'in a jungle') The voiceover artist replies 'Yeah! I know what you mean! Thanks' One take. Job done.