Given how finely attuned the British are to nuance of regional/class accent, Sandi’s ‘thick’ NY accent may have actually have been quite minor.
Brits returning after only 6 months in Australia are said to have picked up a detectable twang.
If Dara sounds different to you from the other Irish guests, it might be because his first language is Irish Gaelic. And he also has a slight lisp.
I’d have to disagree with bonzer about Liza Tarbuck - she might have been born in Liverpool, but she has no trace of a Liverpool accent whatsoever. She just speaks generic Estuary English (which is the standard middle-class accent of London and the surrounding area – educated, but not posh).
The only QI guest I can think of who has a Liverpool accent is John Bishop. But it’s well known that his accent is fake and part of his stage persona.
Yep, that’s the one. Glad I remembered right. I would so love to hear her speak some NY ease. Please post a link if it exists!
Ross Noble grew up in Cramlington, which is in Northumberland rather than Tyne and Wear, but close enough to Newcastle that most residents would consider themselves Geordies. (I vaguely knew him at school, as that really funny kid a couple of years ahead of me who came to school on a unicycle).
I can’t watch YTs in work. I didn’t say he grew up posher (I have no clue what O’Briain’s upbringing was like), just that his accent is, at least to my ears ;).
I imagine he learned Irish as he was learning English, so not sure what his first language would be in that instance, but either way I cannot detect anything in his accent that would indicate to me that he is a Gaelic speaker. It just sounds like a middle-class Dublin accent.
I’ve always liked him. I think I still have the old Snigglets book around here somewhere.
Yeah, traditionally a Cramlington accent would be classified as Pitmatic, but I’m not sure that’s really been the case since it became a New Town in the Sixties. My impression is that a large proportion of the families moving in then were, like mine, from Tyneside, and that, so far as there is a distinctive Cramlington accent, it’s probably more Geordie than anything else, these days.