Meet the 'friendly' Scot from Oban chosen to voice Lidl’s self-service checkout tills

The voice of Alan Macdonald, from Oban, will be heard across Lidl’s Scottish branches from October 1, guiding shoppers as they scan their items.

He was picked as the winner of a competition fronted by Hollywood star Alan Cumming, with 5,000 people sending the company voice samples on WhatsApp.

More than 20,000 people took part in the vote to choose the new Scottish voice. Mr Macdonald, 46, lost his eyesight in 2009 following a number of complications.

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This led to him deciding to study sound engineering at the University of the Highlands and Islands before going on to work with Oban FM.

Mr Macdonald said hearing his own voice coming from Lidl’s checkouts would be an “out-of-body experience”, adding: “I’m very proud to do it, very happy to do it, but it’ll be odd times ten.”

There is a branch of the German supermarket chain a few hundred feet from his home in the Argyll and Bute town.

He said: “I love doing wee recordings like this. I’ve done things like this in the past for my local radio station, Oban FM, which sadly is no longer on the go.”

Lidl was looking for a “bright and upbeat” voice, with Mr Macdonald recently completing his recordings at a studio near Glasgow.

He said: “They were looking for a predominantly Scottish accent obviously, but upbeat and friendly is the best way to do it. We’ve always been told the Oban accent is along those lines.

“You can hear a smile through the microphone, that’s something I learned on the radio. So I took that into account.”

The former radio presenter said it was important to have an authentic Scottish voice rather than an “generic” AI-generated voice.

He will use a “friendly, not authoritative” tone when informing shoppers items have not been scanned properly – avoiding sounding “bossy”.

Cumming described Mr Macdonald’s audition as “firm, but sort of cheeky at the same time”.

Lidl has invested £3 million to install self-checkouts across all of its Scottish stores by November.

Marco Ivone, director of Lidl GB in Scotland, said: “We are incredibly thankful for the amazing response to our campaign from communities across the country.

“From the thousands of entrants who brought forward a variety of voices and personalities, to the 20,000 who cast their votes to help select our winner, this has been a brilliant celebration of the diversity, creativity, and spirit of the people we proudly serve.”