Ban on North East Natterer Cheryl Cole

NOT for the first time has the North of England lost out because of our distinctive accents. Yesterday it was the turn of Cheryl Cole to be dumped from the US X Factor apparently because of her Geordie accent which some Yanks don't seem to understand. Kevin Maguire in the Daily Mirror today let loose with a mouthful of Geordie invective: 'America's loss is our gain if the Yanks are tee lazy te understand wor Cheryl.' Kevin even lashed out at London with 'Tyek the Big Smoke, a city which likes te think of itself as Newcastle without the proper culture, an aal that.'

Recently, the actress Maxine Peake, as the barrister Martha Costello in the TV series Silk, was told to tone down her Northern accent which she resolutely refused to do. Maxine is the daughter of a lorry driver from Bolton and she began her acting career at the Bolton Octagon. In her youth she was in the Young Communist League but now regards herself as a socialist. Ms Peake is now involved in the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT) which keeps alive the memory of those who served on the republican side in the Spanish Civil War but when, soon after the death of the Northern trade unionist Jack Jones, her name was suggested as a patron of the IBMT she was shunned. Londoner Ken Livingstone and the University of London academic Professor Paul Preston are at present the two patrons of the IBMT. In this case it is not clear if it was Maxine Peake's Northern accent that disqualified her from the role or the fact that she no longer considered herself a commie.