Finding the appropriate person to read an audiobook is clearly a tricky art. Given the excitement surrounding its paper publication, it was never going to be long before the audiobook version of Morrissey's Autobiography arrived. Fans will of course have been hoping for the unmistakeable astringent camp of the singer's own Mancunian tones – familiar from decades of indie hits and acid public comments on his rivals – to deliver his memoir himself. Instead, the Liverpudlian actor David Morrissey, known for playing stern and leathery politicians and tough guys, will be reading an unabridged version. Is he the right man for the job?
He does share a surname with Morrissey, but not very obviously much else. (I presume this won't be prompting a search for other namesake narrators? David "Peep Show" Mitchell reading David "Cloud Atlas" Mitchell? Dawn French tackling the grisly thrillers of Nicci French?… I'm not convinced.)
Some pairings in the audiobook world have become modern classics – think of Stephen Fry melliflously voicing forth Harry Potter, so definitively one feels the books could not possibly have been read by anybody else. Timothy Dalton's melodic reading of the crime series by John Banville's alter ego Benjamin Black makes for a similarly fitting combination of voice and style. However, letting plummy-voiced Kate Winslet loose on Andy Stanton's raucous stories for children about that absolute grimster Mr Gum seems like a less fortuitous idea.
There are so many wonderful pairings. I always thought Jarvis Cocker would be a great narrator of contemporary fiction, and lo, he is: here he is reading from neuroscientist David Eagleman's micro-fictions about the afterlife, Sum. Colin Firth has recorded a fine, atmospheric reading of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, while Samuel L Jackson has great fun with Chester Himes's A Rage in Harlem (as well as with the pastiche children's bedtime story Go the Fuck to Sleep).
Moving into the realm of the possible, I'd rather like to hear Patsy Kensit reading Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and what about Danny Dyer to read Revenge, the latest by Martina Cole?
Who would you choose to read which book and why?
