IT’S the voice, the voice – sorry, I just don’t get the voice.

Hugh Laurie, the world’s highest-paid actor, has come up with anguished self-deprecating sleeve-notes to the release of an album whose New Orleans blues music he so patently adores.

But on the actual tracks he has also come up with the most grating vocals I have heard.

It’s not that his singing is poor, it’s agreeably passable, but it just doesn’t have the weight to carry the material, which is quite hauntingly played by a gifted assemblage of musicians.

Straying into his House character’s Americanised delivery does not help either and often distracts and detracts from exceptional arrangements of classics such as They’re Red Hot, Tipitina and Swanee River.

As a blues pianist, Laurie has a natural feel for the sway of sadness that is largely the blues, but his blues voice is ideal for... mime.