I’m living in Scotland with two Scottish flatmates. The accent is terrible.
My great-grandmother was from Scotland.
But I’ve never been there.
So I guess my opinion doesn’t count. 
I’m Scottish. I’ve lived here my whole life. What is being gently missed here is that there are a HUGE variety of accents in Scotland, just like in England. There was once a record called “The Rumour”, which was about a piece of gossip being spread around Scotland, and it was sung in a differnet accent every time it got to a new place.
I have to say I’ve met more than a few people who sound like Willie, and they’ve come from all over the place. Shetland, some of them (although you might get hit if you tell Shetlanders that they’re Scottish, and besides, there are loads of different accents up there, including English ones). So do bear in mind that there’s no really generic “Scottish” accent. The closest I’ve ever heard was Mike Myers, and his accent is utterly appalling, made me want to hit someone. People trying to do “Scottish” usually end up doing a mixture of different regions, which always sounds ridiculous even to the untutored. I know that’s what happens when we try to do American accents. For a really good Scottish accent you’d be better to pick one place and stick with it. Dudley Moore did a very good posh Edinburgh. Mel Gibson sounded reasonably west-coast. Etc.
Um. Offensive… well, not because he wears a kilt and bangs on about bagpipes all the time, because we take the piss out of those people ourselves (until we feel like doing it ourselves, and then woe betide anyone who doesn’t dab his eyes with the hem of his kilt). I think he’s just annoying, really, but I suppose I can see why it’s funny. Like on Shooting Stars when they had Curtis Stigers on as a guest and Bob asked him “So, who’s winning over there at the moment - the cowboys or the indians?”
On this page there is a realplayer clip of the infamous Rab C Nesbitt. Watch, listen, take notes, inwardly digest. That’s what we sound like in Glasgow. The show apparently went out with subtitles in England. I’d be fascinated to see if anyone in the US can understand it. It sounds clear enough to me!
(I don’t sound like that, but that’s why I get beaten up)
I wonder how she’d respond if you brought this DVD home for her collection.
Thanks for the link Ross! Now I’m not going to get anything done for the next three days while I explore that site. We need more BBC comedy shows in the US.
Married to a Scot - all her family live in Glasgow and environs - not offensive.
Rab Nesbitt DID NOT have subtitles, though it was handy having a scottish wife.
Me - ‘What’s a “bahookey”?’ ‘What does “clartey” mean?’
I saw Gregor Fisher, the actor who plays Rab today in Carlisle as it happens.
Worse than Willie’s accent waas the brief appearance of a scottish girl when Bart stole the tractor during the school inspection. It seemed to be based on Maureen O’Hara’s bad Irish accent from ‘The Quiet Man’!
MiM
Please make that someone Mike Myers.
I wonder if people from “North Kilttown” find willy offensive…
bahookey means ‘arse’, or as the yanks would say ‘fanny’.
clartey means ‘dirty’, but usually in a disgusting sense.
If someone was to say drink the beer straight from the slops tray you’d call him clartey.
As for Wullie. I find him quite funny, not offensive. Interestign how in one episode they had him say ‘shite’, I always thought American tv was quite unforgiving about swearing.
His accent, sounds to me, to be stereotypical/generic highlander accent.
But certainly not doric.
We hardly ever say that… ‘ass’ is much more common.
If he pronounced ‘shite’ with a long** i**, the networks probably assumed it was a scottish word and didn’t even notice. I remember when Star Trek’s Capt. Picard used the word merde (French for shit) and it was not censored.
“Wankers” has got through on a couple of occasions as well. It must be that they don’t know what it means (or at least assume the audience won’t).
I can provide a parallel, I guess. I’m from the South (in the US), and back when I was a kid, two very popular sitcoms were The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show, which portrayed southerners as complete idiots. Ironically, these shows were very popular in the south and still are in reruns, I reckon.
No, it didn’t and I saw it from the first episode. Took me a few episodes to get my ear tuned though.
Ah ha! Maybe I should have waited for this thread (when all the Scots were about) to ask the meaning of “away and raffle yer donut”! No worries, though. I received a quite ::cough:: clear answer.
Back to the OP, I wouldn’t or haven’t felt that Willie (or Wullie) would be any more offensive then having Apu work at a convenience store.
Whose … yours or theirs? 
I’ve heard this before. It’s an insult, isn’t it? A serious one? I was amazed at how the UK’ers would talk to each other (well, not so much the English). One can tell, in context, that a lot of stuff said between them is in jest and good fun; but, if you were to read a transcript of it, it sounds bloody awful.
**irishgirl ** told me it means: “To raffle…to sell tickets for a prize. The winner is picked out of a hat. Yer doughnut…think figuratively rather than literally. A body part resembling a doughnut. It’s like ‘away off and sell your hole to the highest bidder’.”
Apparently, it is the stronger version of “away and boil yer heid”.
Just as ironically, the old *Amos n’ Andy * radio show was popular among blacks.
Although Rab C Nesbitt did not have subtitles as such they were available via the normal option for those people who were hard of hearing. I actually used to turn those on when the show was being broadcast so that I could understand what he was saying.