Lord Of The Rings star Sir Ian McKellen is bringing a bit of magic to the Speaking Clock.
The actor, who played the wizard Gandalf in the hit fantasy films, will be the voice of the long-running telephone timepiece until Friday March 13 - Comic Relief Red Nose Day.
Until then, BT will donate 10p from each call made to the Speaking Clock from BT landlines, with the money going to the charity.
Sir Ian, whose career also includes roles in the X-Men films and regular performances with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, said: "Red Nose Day is a national institution and I'm delighted to be at last making my debut with Comic Relief. As for the Speaking Clock, I hope everyone will give me a call, if they have the time, so to speak."
The clock has been providing the correct time since July 24 1936, and is accurate to five-thousandths of a second.
Some of the famous voices who have been heard as the Speaking Clock include David Walliams, Chris Moyles and Cheryl Cole, who all took part for charity.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article