OVER the centuries, Time has dripped in water-clocks and whispered in hour-glasses, ticked in watches and boomed sonorously from bell-towers. Romantics heard it in the roar of avalanches, the creak of glaciers, the crackle of fire in timber and the long susurration of waves on the shore. But for many people in Britain for much of the 20th century, indulging the national weakness for exact timekeeping, Time spoke from the other end of a telephone line. His number could be dialled; and from a room presumed full of chittering and whirring timepieces, Time would inform them that “At the third stroke, the time, sponsored by Accurist, will be ten twenty-seven and fifty seconds.” His companion robot then chimed in: Pip—pip—pip.

Brian Cobby was neither the first, nor the longest-serving, of Britain’s speaking clocks. But he was the only male, and thus the closest to Time personified. Women, who mostly staffed telephone exchanges in the beginning, made natural speaking clocks, efficient and friendly, perm and pearls and feather-duster; but for that sense of Chronos or Saturn, or Father Time himself, it had to be Mr Cobby’s voice. That “Accurist” part was rather a shame, like Jove in a Nike T-shirt; but he wore it well.

The voice was educated but not prissy, to quote himself. He was Gravesend-born, went to an Oxford high school, sang as a chorister and sounded then, he fancied, somewhat like A.A. Milne’s Christopher Robin. His father, a manager of Woolworths’ stores, had moved all round the country, so no accent could be pinned on Brian. He was bookish, liked doing puzzles, and filled the sitting room of his Brighton flat, where he lived contentedly alone, with Egyptian totems and decorative Japanese ideograms. Clocks were no particular passion, but astrology was; people he met would quickly be asked what sign they were. He was Libra, calm, assured and in balance: so much so that ladies of a certain age liked to listen to his voice at night, soothing their insomnia, and would write to thank him afterwards. He had not been the night switchboard operator at Withdean telephone exchange for 16 years for nothing.

His tones as Time were warm, mature, velvety and clear. They suggested that he had, by day, a cup of tea to hand, by night a mug of steaming cocoa, and at all times a slice of the sort of cake that is stuffed with brandy-soused raisins. In fact, the secret of his mellifluousness was a teaspoonful of Worcester sauce. His voice was hearty, befitting a man who cooked up steak-and-kidney pie, liked a pint and had the waistline to prove it; but with a note of Saturnine wistfulness, reflecting the dreamer who loved to watch the changing light of day through the variously coloured bottles of washing-up liquid on his kitchen window sill.

Authority was expected of him, but only “sometimes”. He probably exuded more in his first stage role, when he played God, or in his voice-over TV work, challenging Britons in the 1960s to tell the difference between Stork margarine and butter, to eat Fry’s Turkish Delight, “full of eastern promise”, and to wash their clothes whiter with Surf. By and large, he preferred naughtiness. Several photos of him in chronological mode, always with telephones or timepieces of various sorts and sizes, showed a sly look, as if a trick was about to be perpetrated. In one of his minor film roles as a young jobbing actor he had daringly shown his naked bum, insisting it was just as beautiful as his voice. When he found himself in 1985 on a shortlist of 12 out of 5,000 applicants, with all the others women, he cheekily hoped the panel would choose a speaking clock with a pendulum.

The job required consummate accuracy, and he had it. This was a man who liked everything arranged just so: notepads aligned on the table, ornaments in their places, a shaken-but-not-stirred Martini every night at 6pm on the dot. He recorded the speaking clock’s 86 separate words in a single take of 50 minutes; though someone forgot to include “o’clock”, obliging him to drive up again to London the next day. “O’clock” was followed by “precisely”, delivered with especial fondness and exactitude; for indeed the time he announced, measured by an atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory, was accurate to within five milliseconds, more reliable even than computers and mobile phones. In the 21st century Mr Cobby still set right 30m callers a year.

A toast to himself

By 2007, when his voice “retired”, he accepted that it had become a bit old-fashioned. But then, so was he. Over the years he had grown into the very quintessence of Time, with wavy white hair and beard and a right index finger impressively gnarled, as if it pointed out the hours. He had taken up gardening, though not usually with a scythe. At New Year he would dial himself, put himself on the speakerphone, and toast himself in champagne.

In the streets of Brighton and Hove he delighted to be identified (usually by his voice) and asked to give the time. He felt surrounded by affection. Not so the 1985 runner-up, a lady from Lowestoft, whose prize was to be the voice that said, “The number you have dialled has not been recognised.”