Even though the highly-secretive Apple tried its best to conceal the identity of its Siri voice-activated personal assistant in the UK, the man behind the voice – Jon Briggs – has broken his silence and disclosed the part he played in developing the feature.

Five years back, Briggs – whose voice is behind 5,000 sentences that are a part of the Siri personal assistant – had reportedly recorded his voice for Scansoft, which was later taken over by Nuance and the technology was then licensed to Apple --- with the result that it is Briggs voice that is heard by Apple-device owners round the world.

During the course of his interview with the Telegraph, Briggs revealed that he had done a set of recordings – for text-to-speech services - with Scansoft around five years back. He said that the recordings comprised 5,000 sentences that had been spoken in a specific manner, with the reading primarily being flat and even.

Going by the Telegraph report, those words can now be heard in several places, like as GPS navigators and on the BBC's Weakest Link quiz show. They have been packaged together as "Daniel", and are apparently the only licensed male voice response recordings in the UK.

Disclosing that he realised that it was his voice that marked the responses to queries from Apple users only after he saw a demonstration on the TV, a rather laid-back Briggs said: “I got paid a decent sum by Scansoft. I love Apple's products and I think Siri is a game-changer.”