The next Brian Glover

Kes

I had a bit of a shock this morning. Lately, I've been involved in a project with kids which has involved them making a film. The film [video, actually] is made up stories culled from older people and mostly acted, directed filmed etc by kids. It's been quite enjoyable and seems to have been worthwhile.

My short bask in the reflected glory of this project was suddenly put in the Shadow when my copy of the film arrived in the post this morning.

I had a couple of small parts [art really does imitate life] in some of the scenes. Loud and aggressive adult, shouter at kids, evil copper, that sort of thing. What I never realised until I watched it was how awful my accent is.

I always knew that I had quite a strong Yorkshire accent but I never realised that it was such a strong Leeds accent. Hailing from Leeds this shouldn't be much of a shock for me. But it was. I'd thought that I'd managed to knock the sharp edges off of it but the opposite seems to have been the case.

Being assailed by a good strong Yorkshire accent, such as the one wielded by the late Brian Glover [in the pic above, from the film Kes] is like being cuffed around the head with rolled up newspaper. Having heard my dulcet northern tones, it was like opening the boot cupboard door and having all the clogs fall out on you.....

You can always tell somebody from Leeds [but you can't tell them much!] by their awful clanging twang. Think of the character of Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street. Liz Dawn, herself from Leeds, is the epitomy of the Leeds twang. Another Corrie veteran Gail Tilsdly [Hellen Worth] is also a "Loiner". The difference between them is vast. Liz Dawn comes from Torre Road. All back-to-back, two up-two down houses of the sort inhabited by her alter ego on the TV. Ms Worth, by contrast, was born in West Park. You don't walk into town from West Park. In fact, if your postcode is LS25, you don't walk.

The difference between LS4 and LS25 is Crossgates [LS15] where I did my growing up. This probably accounts for my accent not being as "smooth" as one but fails to account for it being considerably rougher than the other!