Kat, the controvesy thing is part of the south-east English accent which is the closest thing to 'standard' English, used on BBC etc, familiar from newsreaders and so forth. A feature of this accent is that speakers don't pronounce 'post-vocalic R', so 'car' comes out as 'cah' and 'controversy' comes out as 'controvehsy'. People in the North and some other parts of England, and in Scotland, do pronounce these Rs. So it depends on where the speaker comes from.

Interestingly pronouncing your post-vocalic Rs is seen as a low status marker here ('working class') whereas in the States it's the other way round - compare pronunciation of 'whore' as 'ho' in the States.