Accents on TV

The following may not belong here but it's not worth a thread of its own (assuming it's worth posting at all, which is doubtful.)

The other night on the BBC World Service I heard an announcer refer to a Kay Production or a K-production and I had time to wonder what that was before the context made it clear that he was trying to say co-production.

He wasn't a newsreader, but the host of some program of specific interest, I forget what. He had the sort of London-area hip young pseudo working class accent in which little comes out as li'iw. It struck me because British pronunciation hardly ever throws me at all (not counting rural Cumberland and the like).

It struck me because British pronunciation hardly ever throws me at all (not counting rural Cumberland and the like).

It does me! In the past I've heard people speaking 'thick' Scouse and Geordie and wondered which part of Europe (ie outside the UK) they were from.

I haven't heard that many thick British accents I guess, stormboy.

I probably overstated things. What I meant is that accents of Brits who are being paid to speak understandably hardly ever throw me even for a second or two, as this guy's long o's did.

The widest range of accents you'll hear frequently in UK broadcasting come from footballers , football managers and commentators.

Once your ears are tuned into the regular pronouncements of Sir Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello, Arsène Wenger, Rafa Benítez, Davie Moyles, Harry Redknapp, Gordon Strachan, Alex McLeish, Gianfranco Zola, Csaba László et al you'll never struggle with an accent again!

A Glaswegian secretary of mine once asked me "Andrew - how do you spell oatweed?"

I said I'd never heard the word. Assuming a botanical term, I guessed O-A-T W-E-E-D.

"No" she said, "I meant as in the advantages oatweed the disadvantages".

BBC Radio 4 has a wonderful West Indian continuity announcer whose voice is so rich he sounds like he must be an opera singer in his spare time. There were quite a lot of complaints when he started, but fortunately the BBC quite correctly ignored them.

Even now when I hear him, and notwithstanding the various accents on the BBC these days, I hear him as a breath of fresh air.