Is ‘me’ as a possessive pronoun limited to northern England? I’ve only heard it in Liverpool and Newcastle. This usage has been made famous in The Beatles song, “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Wait, are you saying that the song title means “Can’t Buy My Love”? And not “I can’t use money to buy love”??
While I agree that in some dialects “me” is used in place of “my”, the Beatles song you mention is NOT an example of it:
In other words, I’ll buy you whatever you want because I don’t care about money, since it can’t buy love (for me).
Yes: Can’t by love for me; not can’t buy my love.
Isn’t it a stereotypical Irish thing, too? And from there to Australia?
That’s certainly perfect usage, but what I get a kick out of is the slang usage like “I’m going to play me guitar.”
I love that affection. 
I don’t think it’s correct to call this usage “slang” or an “affectation”. It’s a dialectical variant. It would be equally erroneous to call “y’all” in the southern US or non-rhoticity in Boston an affectation.
I can’t find it now, but years ago when this notion came up, a board regular (don’t recall who) opined that when the Beatles sang “Love, love me do” they were not inviting the listener to become fond of the singer’s hair styling.
I’ve heard it in Popeye cartoons.
As others have said, no: the “me” in “can’t buy me love” is an indirect object.
This Beatles reference works, though.
Great. Now I’m going to think about pirates every time I hear that song. Ye canna buy me love, matey. Yarrr.
I’m pretty sure that when people do use ‘me’ as a possessive in various dialects it’s just the original pronunciation of ‘my’.
After all, ‘my’ would have been pronounced that way by all English speakers before the great vowel shift around 600 years ago.
“Me brain hurts!”
-Gumby Theatre, Monty Python
Where did the usage “recommend me <something>” come from? Never sounds right to me.
Interesting. Do we know if the ‘me’ pronunciation is preserved from that time, or if it shifted to ‘my’ and then shifted back to ‘me’ later?
IANA linguist, but my guess is that it’s never changed. Scots still has lots of pronunciations which I think date from before the great vowel shift, like ‘hoose’ for ‘house’, so it wouldn’t be surprising to find them in other parts of Britain.
It was OK, but I didn’t think it was that great.
What you’re talking about is the ditransitive usage of “recommend,” which some speakers do find problematic. By “ditransitive,” I mean it is able to take both a direct and indirect (or primary and secondary) object. An example of a completely unobjectionable ditransitive verb is “give.” “Give me the book.” Some (perhaps many) speakers find similar usage of “recommend” unobjectionable (I use the construction naturally myself.)
As for how far back it goes, looking through Google books, I find constructions like that in the 1800s. Actually, here’s one as early as 1780:
Thanks pulykamell. I grew up hearing things like “recommend a book to me”.
I’m sure it varies by region, social groups, etc. I grew up in a neighborhood where hearing things like “hey, can you borrow me a buck, chief?” was normal, so the “recommend me” construction is particularly unnoticed by me.