The site was started in 1996 as a result of hearing Hugh Laurie's voice in many
of the adverts that were being screened at the time. I though it might be
interesting to make a note of who I recognised in the many adverts that bombard
us in between the programmes (if you remember, they are meant to be the
interesting bits). It didn't take long before I had a list long enough to make
it worth while posting on the web for everyone to enjoy 
When the site was first published, it contained a simple list of voice-overs
and appearances and not a lot else. Over the years I added wonderful things
such as the video clips section, music entries, java search engine, guestbook,
forms for submitting adverts, links, etc. I have been helped over the years by
many people submitting advert details, video clips and other useful
information. You can see the more prolific ones by clicking here.
For all those of you interested in the more technical aspects, the site
consisted of many static html pages generated from flat text files containing
the data. A 'C' program and a number of REXX scripts generated the html files.
This was all very well but it did make the site difficult to update and it
wasn't very interactive. Then, everything changed...
The site was re-written completely in C# using Microsoft's ASP.NET 1.1 framework.
It made for a more interactive experience with the introduction of forums as well
as the ability to update the site as each new
voice-over, appearance and soundtrack is identified. The storage for the forums and the
advert database consisted of a number of XML files. That served me well for a while but as the
forums and adverts grew, things started to creak a bit.
The site has been moved over to the ASP.NET 2.0 framework and now uses Master pages to help keep a
consistency throughout the site. The XML files have finally been dropped and converted to SQL
databases which have improved the speed and quality of the searches tremendously.