Arrogance alert

I thought it was about time I 'bigged' myself up a bit. So today I'm going to tell you about something that I'm brilliant at. Anyone who knows me would probably agree. In fact, I know they would agree. So what is it that I can afford to be so arrogant about? What do I feel I am so good at? I shall tell you then, dear reader (that's a generic 'reader', not a singular version).

Accents.

I am great at doing accents. I once counted them all and it was over 50. I must say that I think I have a natural talent for impersonating voices. Not impersonating people, but rather the way they speak. It's a bit ironic really that I have such a good ear copying the way people speak because when it comes to singing I'm bloody abysmal. Not so much tone-deaf as tone-dead. I truly have an appalling ability to not follow the tune of any song. I had a singing lesson once. The bloke played a note on the piano which I was supposed to then sing. After several attempts, he told me to sing the note and he would try and copy it. He couldn't find a matching note. That's a true story and one which proves my point. I am to singing what Genghis Khan was to 13th century world peace or Tequila slammers are to incisive political debate. I can't sing.

So, good job then that I can do accents. I do international as well as regional accents. Being from England, I do many UK accents including all the ones that actors put on their CV's (resumes for our U.S chums) such as 'Cockney', 'Scouse' and 'Scottish'. Now if you are reading this from Scotland, that last one will annoy you. It will annoy you for the same reason as someone who says that they can do an 'American', 'English' or 'Irish' accent does. That's because countries do not have a single generic accent and as someone who actually lives in the UK, I should be able to do at least some regional variations.

So, I can do two or three Scottish accents including a fairly good Glaswegian. I can do a Southern Ireland (Eire) and Northern Ireland accent and in fact, can have a go at two N.I accents - (London)Derry and Belfast. Yes there is a difference! I can do north and south Wales pretty damn well. I was once working in a job where I had to pretend to be from an actual Welsh village called Ystradgynlais. I was chatting to some Welsh people (using my accent) and they asked where I was from. Now being all professional, I didn't want to say that I was from a town in England but they went on and on at me until I told them that I wasn't Welsh. They were gobsmaked but the best bit was when they said that they knew I wasn't from Ystradgynlais because I sounded like I was from Cwmtach. Cwmtach is about 2 miles from Ystradgynlais. It was then that I knew I was good.

My international accents are not too bad and include (without regional variations - yet) 'Australian', 'French', 'South African', 'Chinese', 'Italian', 'Russian' and others. For the USA I reckon I can do 'New York', 'Texas" and a sort of generic one which sometimes becomes a 'California' special.... Maybe I shall give you a taster on the next podcast which is due out this week. I know you're all waiting with baited breath. Er, possibly. Well that's enough being arrogant for one day and time to revert to my usual, modest self.

I'm brilliant at modesty.