What does pre-historic chewing gum have to do with voiceovers? Not a lot on the face of it, but pre-historic chewing gum was arguably the thing that started me on the path to my current career. Let me explain… Back in 1997 I was a PhD student at the University of Bradford . My field of study was Archaeological Science, and I was looking at natural products (tars and resins) that had been used in the Mesolithic period (5, 000 – 10,000 years ago) as glues and waterproofing agents. These kinds of materials are only preserved in anaerobic conditions (lacking oxygen), such as water-logged bog sites, and so most of the material I was interested in was located in soggy Scandinavia. I spent three weeks during the first year of my research travelling around Demark and Sweden collecting samples to study, and during my travels I came across a number of lumps of tar with human tooth impressions in them – chewing gums. Quite what the purpose of these lumps of tar was, nobody really kne