When I was growing up in a quiet little town in the south of England, I was always jealous of people with accents. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful” I thought, “to be able to ask for jellied eels, or a sausage barm, without sounding like a ponce. Wouldn’t it be bloody brilliant if the sound of my voice alone communicated a deep-rooted link to the precise location of my upbringing.”

I do, of course, have vocal indicators that identify me as southern English. Many people are even able to place my accent in the south east. But am I from Basildon or from Basingstoke; from Berkshire or from Kent? My part-BBC part-Estuary English style of speech gives few pointers to a precise location. The fact is, millions of people across a large chunk of the country speak in much the same boring way as I do. My voice is a poor compass. It’s hardly surprising, then, that I dreamt of having a real accent.

And I wasn’t the only one. Quite a few of my schoolmates, acutely aware of our shared non-accent, tried to adopt alternatives – with varying degrees of success. Out of my best friends, Mark went Cockney, Dave became Brummie and Pete plumped for Pakistani: a particularly   ill-considered move that did little for his reputation among the local Asian community.

Now in our mid-twenties, I think we’ve all accepted we’ll never have real accents. We’ll always be simply ‘southern’. Yet I remain absolutely fascinated by cities or small regions with a unique style of speech. So when I was given the opportunity to move to Manchester in mid-2008 there was just a single thought that crossed my mind. Mint. Read more…