My parents moved from Sussex to County Durham when I was about three months' old but it is to my eternal regret that they later insisted on sending me to elocution lessions to make sure I didn't grow up talking like my mates. For all my attempts to confound them, the ruse broadly succeeded.

I love it when people sing in their own accents - Kate Rusby, Bob Fox, Johnny Handle and of course countless others - and hate it when they deliberately don't. But then I always thought Cara Dillon affected a slightly mid-Atlantic accent in her singing, which she certainly doesn't have in conversation, only to be told by someone from her part of Ulster that it was perfectly natural. When I heard her version of There Were Roses, on which she sounded every bit as Ulster as Tommy Sands, I dropped all resistance.