Accents

Last night, well after I should have gone to bed, I was listening to music, and wavering on that border between wakefulness and sleep. As it happens, I was listening to Duke Special's enthralling Adventures in Gramophone. He is that rare thing on this side of the Atlantic, a singer who sings entirely unaffectedly in his native tones. Compare and contrast, for example, Sir Elton Hercules John, who seems to think that "Sorrah" seems to be the hardest word to say. Well, clearly for him. (I don't hate Elton John, for the record, but he is a serial offender.)

I don't claim to have a particularly acute ear for accents, though as a result of my upbringing I can distinguish between Mackem and Geordie, for example. It's not an easy business, but if you spend 18 years listening to both, it's achievable. There are also - and here I will hold up my hand - some accents I don't like. I don't care for the Brummie tones, despite having friends who grew up with it. And I generally hate, pace my dear friend Mike, the Scouse twang. Actually, I suspect Mike might join me in that if he's honest, but he's Liverpool born and bred.

It works the other way too. My parents are (were, in one case) Glaswegians, and I can hear the broadest Glasgow patter with a sense of warmth and belonging. Probably my favourite Glaswegian phrase, of someone who is particularly mean, is "He widnae gie ye a spear if he wiz a Zulu". And I love love love Stanley Baxter's Parliamo Glasgow: if you haven't seen it, look it up on YouTube. It's a work of genius.

Back to Duke Special. He's a Lisburn boy, though based in Belfast now, I believe, and, I suppose, no longer a boy. I first fell in love with him when I fell in love with the ex, as they were both from County Down and had, in fact, been to the same school, though were not contemporaries. I know many people won't share this view, and may in fact take quite the opposite, but I love Northern Irish accents. Yeah, yeah, there are romantic reasons for that. But I love the timbre, the cadence, the nuance that can be packed into a few words. I can, I think, distinguish between different varieties of it: astonishing, really, that different intonations can be crowded into six small counties. My ex's mother is from Fermanagh, and her sounds were distinctly different from her Down-raised children.

There is also, in Northern Ireland - and let's not be coy about it - a different tone between Catholics and Protestants. It sounds absurd when you type it, as I just have, but if you listen to, say, Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson, they don't speak in the same way. Their intonations are different, and, to natives if not to me, instantly recognisable. I don't know how it arose (although accents fascinate me, I know very little about how they developed) but it's true nonetheless.

So I admit to loving Ulster accents. Which is not to say I deprecate or abjure voices from the South. There is something about the (cliche klaxon) Irish brogue which is very attractive. The Irish Senate, a mad but great body, includes a man called David Norris, an independent and campaigner for gay rights, who has the most wonderful accent. I met him once, at Leinster House, and could have listened to him for hours. Again, YouTube, people. (Oh, all right, you lazy tikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM0tWN9oymQ) You won't be disappointed.

I sometimes wonder about accents before the widespread advent of sound recording, especially with regard to Ireland. What did Edward Carson sound like? Or FE Smith? Or Oscar Wilde? (Carson and Wilde had been friends at TCD: when the latter heard that the former was to prosecute in his libel trial, he remarked "No doubt he will pursue his case with all the added bitterness of an old friend.") For that matter, what did HH Asquith sound like? Was he a good speaker? Or Bonar Law?

I will end on this coda. Some of my friends are aware that I have a massive crush (if a 40-year-old can be said to have a 'crush') on Dr Lucy Worsley, of the Historic Royal Palaces. Maybe it's infantile, but there we are. I do. Mostly it's because I am deeply susceptible to clever woman; partly it's because I think she's very pretty; but part of it is the rhotacism. I don't know why it should be, nor wherein me it comes from, but that slight speech impediment - I feel bad even calling it that - makes my heart burst with fondness. I find it utterly charming and compelling. I don't think it's a childhood thing, as I never developed feelings for Violet Elizabeth Bott. Maybe I need therapy.