Posted by Mike Dennis on October 18, 2003 at 17:25:35 from 195.92.67.65 user MTD.
In Reply to: Racist, forsooth! (was Blackett English) posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 18, 2003 at 11:35:06:
Wait a minute, my point was to do with attitudes towards regional accents in the UK - by which I meant mild ones. The classic example is when Wilfred Pickles (the Yorkshire comedian etc) was used during WWII to read the national news by the BBC, there as outrage. I've heard the recordings of the bulletins and you would be hard pushed to actually work out he came from Yorkshire as his accent was so mild!
Speaking with an accent does not mean that you speak indistinctly, there are those who supposedly speak well and can be just as difficult to understand.
My original racism point was to do with Peter suggesting that Nancy's mocking was an ongoing traddition of teasing people about the way they speak, but in the context of radio it seems that some listeners get very annoyed if speaker use anything that is not RP. Andrew - do you regard James Naugtie (correct spelling?) who presents the Today programme has having a broad scottish accent? Assuming you don't then it is accents like this that people complain about and send in the hate mail.
On the same track the BBC gets many complaints because they use so many Americans on Radio 4, yet if you take as an example Garrison Keillor who has a wonderful speaking voice and an American accent and could teach some UK broadcasters how it should be done.