Accentuated ignorance

The singing polyglot whose voice caused offence

“No,” I would say each time someone asked for my name when I moved down south, “not Rundle but Randall, R-A-N-D-A-L-L.”

“Oh,” they’d typically reply, “you mean Rendall.”

Did I eventually give up and apply a Home Counties wash-and-brush-up to my surname? Not consciously, but maybe I tweaked its pronunciation since many years have passed since an exchange of that sort occurred.

Pity, though, poor Amelia Coburn, a young and highly gifted singer-songwriter and musician whose debut album, Between the Moon and the Milkman, has just been released.

Some oafish keyboard nitpicker offered this barbed praise for her work:

I came across Amelia Coburn on the radio this week: sounds pretty good although the lower class northern accent doesn’t quite fit the style of music. Her first album has just come out.

The crass comment appeared at Instagram, a platform I rarely use, but Coburn repeated it at Twitter, with this comment: “ … I’ve had loads of people messaging me to say they’ve faced similar issues. What are your experiences of prejudice because of your accent or the way you speak?”

Among scores of messages of solidarity and support was ample evidence that such ignorance is alive and well, still leading hard-of-thinking employers and others to form unjustified poor impressions.

It was precisely in fussy anticipation of such prejudice affecting my future prospects that my mother, a Londoner as was my dad, enrolled me for elocution lessons at a very tender age.

Amelia Coburn is from Middlesbrough, coincidentally the home town of my sister for most of her adult life though we spent our childhoods 25 miles to the west in Shildon, Co Durham.

Never would I have asked to be taught to sound different from my friends. And you’ll see from that ancient elocution report that I barely rated a pass.

But is it of any real concern that a folk singer - or anyone else - speaks with an accent that is commonplace in the areas in which they grew up?

On Twitter at least, Coburn spares her nitpicker the blushes he or she so richly deserves. No name, however disguised or for that matter pronounced, is attached.

Naturally, as someone who worked for The Daily Telegraph for nealy 30 years, I can count among past colleagues some exceedingly bright individuals, not all as politically misguided as might be supposed. I also encountered expensively educated fools. Some from each category, but especially the foolish, undoubtedly looked down on those with accents betraying “lower class northern” status, not least if such oiks out-performed them as journalists.

Perhaps the boyhood elocution lessons, no more than patchily successful as they may have been, gave me an unearned advantage. Indeed, as I mentioned in a reply to Coburn, I have occasionally been accused of not sounding northern enough for a product of south-west Durham.

Amelia Coburn and her record. Photo: Andy Johnson

In the unlikely event that she is in correspondence with whoever posted the insulting if laughable Instagram message, Coburn might usefully ask: “Can you tell us a little about your academic qualifications?”

Hers? A languages degree (her command of French, Spanish and Russian rather nicely complementing the Teesside dialect), encouraging her to believe that if she had not shown musical promise, she might by now working as a translator in Paris.

That would undoubtedly have been another pursuit which her lower-class northern accent did not quite fit.

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Rishi Sunak is having a rough old time. One poll suggests that the Conservatives , if not entirely wiped out, could be left with fewer than 100 seats after the general election he is understandably terrified of calling. Even his own seat, Richmond in North Yorkshire, could be at risk.

And all this trouble for the Tories is brewing without Labour offering much more than the timid challenge of a party wary of offending the easily hoodwinked Red Wall. A Labour government would certainly be more decent but on some key issues, Keir Starmer is for now unwilling - as the Observer’s William Keegan has so aptly put it - to say boo to a goose.

Mindful of the separate threat from Nigel Farage and Reform, Sunak’s latest desperate throw is to appoint Jonathan Gullis as his party’s deputy chairman. Since Gullis is a fully paid-up headbanger with no apparent political acumen, Sunak must hope yet another sop to the increasingly influential Conservative hard right will improve his poll standings and prevent an impertinent leadership challenge. No matter that replacing one Lee Anderson with another Lee Anderson is a further nail in the coffin of a party that once took pride in one-nation conservatism.

In case anyone feels I’m exaggerating, sample this list of Gullis’s contributions to public debate (partly compiled by Huffington Post) …

• Saying “pesky peers” and Labour are to blame for obstructing the crazed Rwanda gimmick (on which, er, he abstained)

• Claiming the Tories have made Britons better off

• Offering the compassionate thought that missing migrant children “shouldn’t have come here illegally”

An electronic acquaintance, Anthony Dent, alerting us to the post-election job choices facing soon-to-be-unemployed Tories, tweeted: “The worry with Jonathan Gullis is not so much about him being promoted way above his ability. It’s more that if he is kicked out in Stoke at the GE then he might go back to teaching our children.”

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Sussex rural life viewed from Charleston House, Firle

The inconvenient skeleton in the cupboard of my northern credentials is that I was born in Hove, not County Durham. In mitigation, I was up north - and in a council house - within a few months and for that I am grateful.

The Land of the Prince Bishops, as I do not recall Co Durham being called back then, has many glorious spots.

But so does the county of my birth, now home to my elder daughter. A short walk on the Downs above Lewes provided compelling evidence of its delights, as did a visit to Charleston House, the preserved residence and gardens of the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Sussex - both bits - is gorgeous.