no i'm not saying i'm against regional accents. but all my family were regional accent speakers, as i suspect yours were jim,   you're a scouser, n'est-ce pas?

and you've got to admit its not just phoney American accents that can be toe curlingly embarrassing. Remember all those Americans with Beatle accents around the time of the fab four? my parents and me had lancashire accents.

I think it was my year doing English for A level that I realised the Lancashire accent was taking me weird places.

The first line of TS Eliot's poetry I ever looked at was

Let us go then you and I
When the moon is spread out against the sky.

I read it out loud, and it was at that point I realised I had never used the word 'I' in my life. My accent went...Ah'm doing this or Ah'm doing that.

if you have to change your accent for poetry, why not song?