HE is well known for his radio voice — but now Mark Radcliffe has taken on a more terrifying role playing a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The BBC 6 Music DJ, who attended Bolton School, will be voicing Manchester Museum's resident T-Rex, Stan, through a new mobile phone recording where visitors will have the chance to talk to the dinosaur.

The skeleton of Stan was excavated by the Black Hills Institute in 1992 after its discovery by an amateur palaeontologist, Stan Sacrison, and is one of the museum's star attractions standing at approximately 13ft high and 40ft in length.

All visitors need to do to hear the Stan's words is to swipe their phone on the nearby barcode for the 65 million years old dinosaur to 'call' them to chat about his background and reveal facts about his life as the tyrant lizard king.

Members of the public were invited to write a short passage for Stan to say in an open competition which Mark will record once the winner has been announced next week.

Mark said: "I think Talking Statues is a brilliant notion and I'm absolutely thrilled to be the voice of Stan. Also, I'm only 5'10" tall and so assuming T-Rex proportions will give me some much needed macho presence."

The audio recording is part of the Talking Statues project, with Sing London and Audible.co.uk, who have worked with celebrated writers, actors and comedians to write and record monologues for statues across London and Manchester.

The audio will be available for people to hear from November 22, the launch of the museum's Big Saturday: Dinosaurs event.

Nick Merriman, director of Manchester Museum, said: "Manchester Museum is always looking for new ways to bring our collection to life. Talking Statues is the perfect opportunity to do this and Mark Radcliffe, a great supporter of the museum, is the ideal person to give a voice to one of our most well-loved exhibits.

"We had lots of entries for the writing competition and it’s great to see how engaged people are with our collection. We’re really excited about sharing what Stan has to say on the Talking Statues launch at our Dinosaurs Big Saturday."

The T-Rex joins other talking statues across Manchester, including code-breaker Alan Turing, Prunella Scales talking as Queen Victoria in Piccadilly Gardens and Tom Conti as Lincoln in Lincoln's Inn Square.