Aye Guest, I am, as a Lancashire lad. It's a short "oo", whether you transcribe it as "loov" or "luv". The trouble is that the "u" in "luv" would pronounced differently dahn Sarf, which is why the old mid-Lancashire greeting "eh-up chuck" is sometimes written as "chook" by people trying to convey how that person talks. (For that matter, I don't know if anyone's got a formal spelling of "eh-up" - is it "eyup" or "eyoop"? :-)

That's part of the problem - how to discuss this. We're trying to convey accents with letters, but everyone from every different region has a different idea of how to pronounce that letter or combination of letters!

Graham.