Erica Sanderson

Hello there and welcome to another episode of the No Sleep Podcast.

Whether you've been listening since the beginning, have recently found us or anything in between, welcome and thank you for joining us.

I'm Erica Sanderson and I'll be your host for today's stories.

If you've been listening for several seasons, you may remember that this is not my first time in the Podfather's big chair, as I hosted a handful of shows while the team were away on one of their early tours.

And speaking of the live shows, No Sleep will be at Crime Wave on Sea 2.0 in February 2027.

You can still sign up at crimewaveatsea.com forward slash nosleep for your exclusive meet and greet with David Cummings, Jessica McAvoy, Peter Lewis, Lindsay Rousseau, Graham Rowett and the maestro Brandon Boone.

Now, if you're still having trouble recognising me, don't worry.

It's rare that I use my natural speaking voice and you're more likely to have heard me playing a young boy, a creepy granny or a snarling monster.

Some of my more iconic roles include a haunted toilet cubicle, a demonic ice cream truck and a parrot.

Yes, I am a classically trained actor and all that animal work at drama school was worth it.

Now, I joined No Sleep in Season 5, Episode 13, which was produced back in May of 2015.

It was a beautiful story called My Wife Cooks Me Dinner by Rona Vassler, and I was partnered with my long-term colleague and friend, Mr David Ault.

In fact, you can probably blame Ault for me being here at all.

My background is as a stage actor, and I was doing a theatre show with David in which I had several quick costume changes.

David very kindly helped me, and in between undressing me, we ended up talking about our respective careers.

At that time, me being away on tour wasn't compatible with family life, so I was looking for a way to branch out my professional acting into voice work, recording scripts from home.

Alt passed my name on to David Cummings, and here I am, over a decade later, all thanks to not being able to zip myself into an evening gown.

Since then, I've narrated several stories and played hundreds of characters, and it's the sheer range and variety of roles across ages, gender, humans, demons and creatures that makes this job such a joy, as well as the opportunity to repeatedly kill, maim or torture Mr. Alt.

Though, to be fair, he's done his fair share of murdering me as well.

In fact, somewhere I've been told that there's a running tally going on.