OK Dave's Wife! Maybe you can help me. I heard from someone some time back that today's English Accentis a fairly recent phenomena. Three hundred years or so ago the accent was much less flavored by the Cockney. It was the Eton kids who took up the Cockney in parody and it stuck! I don't know if this is true but it sounds plausable and it also explains why the northern counties have a more understandable (if that's the right word), less "Cockney-fied" sound. Your views??