It was an easy process to rob a provincial kid of his/her regional identity...

As a boy I had the same west country accent as my dad, and everyone else on the estate...

But my mum, an outsider war evacuee from the midlands, had higher aspirations
and kept nagging me to stop saying words like "gurt" and to talk 'properly'...

Then Grammar school gradually turned me, without realising it,
into a correct little gentleman talking like a BBC news reader..

I now sound rubbish if I try to imitate the accent I was born with - just unable to do it..