My excellent cockney accent
Letter to the Daily Mail, 15th July 1982:
The real thing!
In her TV review of Twentieth Century Box, Mary Kenny reaches the conclusion ‘as in My Fair Lady’ that my excellent cockney accent ‘just can’t be real’.
Mary thinks I either learned it from a ‘Teach Yourself Cockney’ cassette or else I am Hungarian.
Quite obviously Mary grew up in a quaint little Oirish village where she gathered her stereotypes from stiff British black and white films wherein the maid would whine about ‘toffs’, exclaim ‘cor bloomin’ and never dare get involved in this ‘ere new fangled television lark’.
Sorry to spoil the joke gal, but colourful Baker was born in Deptford and has lived for the past 24 years in the well known Hungarian hamlet of Bermondsey, SE16. He never attended university, nor RADA nor even the fiendish Loveaduck School of Ethnic Linguistics, Budapest.
He does, however, enjoy eels and mash (for which he is learning to use cutlery).
Consider yourself one of us, Mary!
DANNY BAKER,
London, W.
