Simon Micawber Prebble is an English–American narrator. Initially a stage actor, he has a wide-ranging career in television drama, was a game show announcer in Britain, and a voice-over narrator for television, and film. In recent years he has narrated a large number of audio books and received an Audie in 2010.
In 1960 he attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and began his acting career in one of Britain's first live televisionsoap operas, 'Home Tonight' with David Hemmings. For the next eleven years he worked extensively on radio and television and in provincial repertory theatre including a year with Ian McKellen's Hamlet. In 1972, in a change of direction, he worked as a continuity announcer for Southern Television. Then in 1973 Prebble joined Capital Radio, the first legal commercial music station in Britain, where he hosted a daily news magazine programme London's Day. He then embarked on a freelance career as a presenter and voice-over announcer, including thirteen years as the promo voice of Thames Television, and from 1984 he was the announcer for the British version of the game show The Price Is Right with Leslie Crowther. In 1990 Prebble moved to New York where he continued doing voice-over work. As well as recording numerous radio and television commercials, he hosted and narrated several television documentary series, notably Target-Mafia. He also voiced the Computer in Courage the Cowardly Dog, which is probably the most famous role of his in the US. His film voice work includes playing Ernest Shackleton in the 2000 documentary . In 1996, he was a lead actor for a year on the American daily soap operaAs the World Turns. In the U.S., he also began narrating audiobooks, and this has now become his main occupation. Reviewing the audiobook edition of Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy in 2005, Publishers Weekly found that,
"Prebble's sonorous British voice is ideally suited to narrating this whimsical, fractured fairy tale; his tone and pacing match Fforde's prose perfectly, and his subtle vocal acrobatics enable him to amusingly bring to life the novel's wildly divergent cast of characters. Despite its many virtues, this is probably Fforde's weakest novel, lacking the literary sophistication of the Thursday Next books. But Prebble's performance easily makes this Fforde's best audiobook to date. Prebble's vibrant, all-star narration more than makes up for them".
As of 2020, he has recorded well over 950 titles. As one of AudioFile magazine's 'Golden Voices' and 'Best Voices of the Century', his work has gained him five 'Listen Up' awards, thirty-seven Earphone awards, and in 2005, he was named 'Narrator of the Year' by Publishers Weekly. Nominated seventeen times for the 'Audies', he was finally awarded a coveted 'Audie' in 2010, the year he was also named Booklists 'Voice of Choice'. In 2003, at Chiswick House, west London, he married Swedish graphic artist, Marie-Janine Hellstrom. In 2007, both he and his wife became US citizens.
