Well, I was listening to The Wall again today, and it got me to wonder:
In “The Trial” (Disc Two), what the heck sort of accent does the schoolmaster have?
Some of the lyrics to help:
"I always said he’d come to no good
In the end, Your Honour
If they let me have my way
I could have flayed him into shape.
But my hands were tied
The bleeding hearts and artists
Let 'im get away with murder
Let me hammer him today"
This has been driving me nuts for years.
Floydopers, can you help?
I always assumed it was Scottish.
I always had thought schoolmasters were culturally English, but this character had a Cockney dialect and a pissed-off one AFAIK…and I never have been to the UK, so this is all in my head.
A Cockney accent is an English accent (in particular, a London east end accent).
The schoolmaster’s accent definitely has some Scottish qualities, but I’m not sure if Waters is copping a particular region of Scotland or if he’s just putting on a generic, cod Scottish.
Quite posh Scottish, Edinburugh perhapse.
Thomas Dolby’s affected accent on the live Wall in Berlin might help…
The teacher clearly has a condoleezza . . . eh, I mean condescending accent 
Argh, I could have sworn I typed – "For someone more familiar with the accents in question–
"
Bleah.