I only have to hear Bernard Cribbins speak and I am instantly five years old again, with the Wombles on the television and the theme tune of Jackanory stuck in my head.

A few years ago, I got the chance to interview him on the telephone and I missed his answers to my first few questions because I was so mesmerised by THAT voice, trickling down the line all the way from London and 1975….

A poll in the news this week reveals that our current favourite voices on the radio belong to Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young and Eddie Mair, host of Radio 4’s daily news show.

The survey, carried out by the Radio Times, is the magazine's first one since Terry Wogan's lilting Irish tones topped the pops back in 2002 and it’s significant because back then, he was the only ‘non-BBC English’ voice in the top 10.

This time, the ten most popular voices include three Scottish accents (Kirsty, Eddie and Ken Bruce), a Welsh accent (John Humphrys) and a Jamaican accent (Neil Nunes), finally putting paid to the idea that people only like to hear posh, English voices on our radios and televisions.

Another voice you will definitely have heard, even if you didn’t realise it was hers, is Marni Nixon's.

She died, aged 86, of breast cancer this week and even if you didn’t know her name, you will know her voice.

Dubbed Hollywood’s ‘invisible voice’, the classically trained musician appeared on some of the biggest musical movies of all time – providing dubbed vocals for leading actresses such as Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and Natalie Wood in West Side Story. She also sang the high notes for Marilyn Monroe in Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend

Her name did not appear on the credits – in some cases, such as when she sang for Kerr in The King and I, she had to sign a contract promising not to reveal she was the ‘ghost singer’. It was only when Kerr herself credited Nixon in an interview many years later, that her remarkable talent came to light.

By the time she retired, she had appeared on more than 50 soundtracks – but she only sang on screen once, as Sister Sophia, one of the nuns performing How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? in The Sound Of Music. (The star of that movie, Julie Andrews, didn’t need a ghost singer!)

In an industry full of fame-seekers and spotlight-hoggers, Marni Nixon seems unusual. Determined to stay out of the limelight, she worked hard behind the scenes with actresses, helping them to sound good and look natural on screen, accepting the secrecy as ‘just part of a working singer’s life’ in Hollywood.

In recent years, she lent her voice to a cause of a different kind – singing at breast cancer fundraisers, as she battled the disease, to raise money for research and support.

Marni Nixon may have been invisible, but she was remarkable all the same.