Can arr tell yow a story?

When I was growing up in Wolverhampton, I’d come home from school full of vernacular words from the other kids – to which my mother would firmly respond “We don’t talk that way in this house, Michael!”

Let’s be honest: the Black Country accent has never been one of the darlings of the British accent landscape, has it? My mother was just doing her best to give me a good start, and to get me speaking “properly”. And she knew that filling my conversations with words like “bab” and “bostin” was likely to hold me back…

When I left school I joined the BBC. My first job was with Radio WM, but much to my surprise - even at Pebble Mill -almost no one spoke like the people around me (and those who did stuck out like a sore thumb!)

Later I moved to London, and became even more aware of where my “sound” still differed from other on air voices. In short, over the years, I worked on neutralising my Black Country accent to something much more neutral.

Today, people are hard pressed to work out where I’m originally from. They may hear one or two vowels that suggest I’m from somewhere “North of Watford”, but very few people would put my place of origin in the West Midlands.

IT AY GONE AWAY!

In the first ten years of my full time voiceover career, I was asked for a West Midlands accent… oh, about once, I think.

But in the last few years, that’s started to change, and it seems that regional accents - including the Black Country accent - are starting to be given their chance to shine. It could be a commercial for a local radio station in Wolverhampton or Birmingham, a company that wants to give their telephone system a bit of “local colour”, or any number of other things.

And fortunately, I can still slip back into it whenever the need arises - whether that’s a broad, “Black over Bill’s mother’s”, or something a bit more more subtle…