Two in One Day (And Brace Yourself for More!)

The Ministry was beginning to worry a bit that our statistic of "roughly once every two weeks someone mentions D.V.D.'s accent in the press" wouldn't hold through the winter. (We had a white paper prepared, blaming global warming.) However, fortune smiled, and after a drought lasting a whopping 23 days, our favorite cliché came through twice today, and our statistic held -- at least on the average.

If we assume that D.V.D.'s accent has been mentioned in the press fortnightly for the last 43 years, that's 26 times per year for a grand total of 1,118 mentions.

Hang on; there would be ten or eleven leap years in that four decades (and change), and that's another week and a half, so there may have been 1,119 mentions.

Onward to today's whinging.

We suspect that as the movie Fred Claus gains wide release in Britain, we'll see more D.V.D. comparisons. On the other hand, the film will probably die a deserving death before it spreads too far.

Reading Evening Post, December 6th, 2007, "Film is Claus for Concern"

Vince Vaughn looks embarrassed and awkward throughout, particularly when he is forced to dance in front of the elves, while Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz is sidelined with an unimportant and unnecessary role that she still manages to make a hash of, struggling with a broad London accent that is more Dick Van Dyke than Mo Slater.

Elsewhere...

Metro, December 6th, 2007, "Kate Nash tells fans to listen up" by Andrew Williams

Q: "Your singing voice has been compared to Dick Van Dyke’s in Mary Poppins. Are you bothered?"

A: "Isn’t he the chimney sweep? I love him. What’s wrong with him? I’d like to be compared to Nancy from Oliver Twist. She’s my favourite."

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,805 days.

Time elapsed since someone mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

23 days

MP3s of Cockney Accents, Both Real and Awful

David Noades of the 365 Days Project on WFMU's Beware of the Blog just posted a fantastic collection of songs about London. Swinging London, Good old London, London at Christmas... you name it. The rule of thumb for this collection seems to be: if the performer has an authentic London accent, he or she can't sing, and if they can sing, the accent isn't all that great. As we all know from studying our man D.V.D., sometimes there is an direct relationship between musical talent and a tin ear for accents.

If you download only one track from this, may I suggest Spike Milligan's Wormwood Scrubs Tango? It's Spike at his post-Goon silliest.

Says Here that a Not Bad Irish Accent is Better Than A Bad Cockney

Irish Independent, November 14th, 2007, "From Page to Stage, Same Old Ross" By Aidan Coughlan

But this adjustment to reality is one which he (Rory Nolan) makes quite impressively, as do his family. The accents are the type you'd genuinely hear in Dundrum Town Centre, avoiding those dreadful caricature voices that sound about as genuine as Dick van Dyke's 'cockney' accent in the 'Mary Poppins' movie.

Apparently there are no bad Irish accents in cinema history worth mentioning. Therefore, when writing about someone not screwing up an Irish accent, nothing fits better than comparing it to D.V.D. screwing up a cockney accent.

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,782 days.

Time elapsed since someone mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

16 days

I Hope He Didn't Try Out His Accent on Her

Yes, this is a picture of Dick Van Dyke meeting the Queen of England. I'm as surprised as you are. The event was the premiere of the James Bond move You Only Live Twice.

Dougray Scott -- Worse than D.V.D.?

inthenews.co.uk, October 28nd, 2007, "TV releases on DVD"

Desperate Housewives

Bree (Marcia Cross) marries a possible murderer (Kyle MacLachlan), Mike (James Denton) is stuck in a coma and Dougray Scott pulls out the worst English accent in living memory. It's worse than Dick Van Dyke.

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,766 days.

Time elapsed since someone mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

1 day.

"...the response is not universally enthusiastic."

The Telegraph, October 28nd, 2007, " A wild time for 'Goose' at Wembley" by Andrew Baker.,

Goose (Tony Siragusa) has had a great time in London this week. Being a gregarious sort, he likes to barrel up to people and offer to buy them a pint in his best Dick Van Dyke 'English' accent. He seems puzzled that the response is not universally enthusiastic. "People seem to think I might be after their money or something."

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,765 days.

Time elapsed since someone mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

13 days.

The New Yorker mentions D.V.D.'s accent

The New Yorker, October 22nd, 2007, "You Say Potato" by Michael Schulman

"The science of speech. That’s my profession. . . . I can place any man within six miles.” That’s Henry Higgins, in Act I of “Pygmalion,” about to transform a lowly flower girl into a proper Edwardian lady. If you are a Manhattan-born starlet making your Broadway début as said flower girl, he is precisely the sort of man you don’t want in your audience. In a play about upwardly mobile speech, the accents have to be right: you don’t want to wind up sounding like Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.” And so a real-life Higgins is called for, in this case—the Roundabout’s revival of “Pygmalion,” soon to open at the American Airlines Theatre—Majella Hurley, an English dialect coach who was brought in to help Claire Danes, as Eliza Doolittle, perfect her “not bloody likely”s and “How do you doooo?”s.

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,752 days.

Time elapsed since someone mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

15 days.