Mel C is in Australia at the moment promoting her new album Beautiful Intentions. Now before I say anything further, anyone who's known me for any length of time happens to know that I rather liked the Spice Girls albums. They came out just as I was leaving high school, and for a period of possibly 14 months they and a whole swathe of Britpop and Punk(?) formed the soundtrack to the whole gammet of my friends and I falling in and out of love, having the freedom and the cars to be able to go anywhere, and 6 weeks before uni began without reponsibilty (or the ability to plan anything until results came out) or care.
The question that arose last night (after that deviation) happened while we were watching Rove. This was: Can you imagine a place where everybody talks like her? Wouldn't that be weird?
Well, such a place does exist and it's one that I hold quite dear, the city of Liverpool.
Nestled at the bottom of a hill and at the ends of the M56 and M53, and hugged by the rather swampy River Mersey, Liverpool shouldn't have much going for it at all. Of course being a port and at one stage the world's biggest, it's a real melting pot where you'd expect to find all sorts of culture (in fact it's the European Capital of Culture for 2008) but it's surprising just how homogenous the place is.
Apart from the obvious things like football which is down lines of colour of red and blue, or the incredible musical vein the city has (Gerry & The Pacemakers, Girls Aloud, Atomic Kitten, The Beatles, The La's, The Lightning Seeds, Frankie Goes to Hollywood) the thing you can't escape is the accent which disappears less than 40 miles away.
Scouse is an incredibly robust accent which is odd considering it's so close in locality to Yorkie, Welsh and the Mancunian Whine. It sounds dead common as well, so the city although it does have lines of class, they all sound dirt poor.
Kim Catrell, Craig Charles, Alexei Sayle, Jimmy Tarbuck, Kenny Everett, Cilla Black, Tom Baker even, they're all Scousers. If you've heard any of them speak sans character you'll hear the same almost grating tone that comes across.
Oi, do you want to buy a new motor?
In case you we're wondering, yes that is from inside a Ka. Even overseas they're still brilliant.
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