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.

They Hate D.V.D.'s Accent in Arizona

Can't really count this one, seeing as it is not a Brit doing the complaining, but still -- two in one day!

The Arizona Republic, Sept. 30, 2007, Network TV is suddenly foreign affair

"Still, you have to wonder: Is Jupiter aligning with Mars? Is this some kind of karmic payback for Dick Van Dyke's atrocious British accent in Mary Poppins?"

See, a Brit wouldn't call it a "British" accent, but would narrow it down to "Cockney" or "London", while on the other hand, Americans think Brits have only one accent.

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,737 days.

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

0 days!

See, it's funny; "The Spoof" says so.

The Spoof, Sept 29, 2007,

Eh, it's not really the news media, just a half-assed humor web page called The Spoof, but I'll count it as a mention. It's really an indictment of how tired the joke is, when you weigh it against all the other tired jokes in the piece.

"Mr Edward's altruistic behaviour appeared to have the full backing of his wife. Talking in the kind of accent not heard in London since Dick Van Dyke's 'Bert' in Mary Poppins, Jane Edwards said..."

Oh, who cares what she said. It's a limp attempt at making fun of... something or other. Can anyone tell me what this page is lampooning and why it is supposed to be funny? If anyone can, I will retract the following statement: "I apologize for posting it."

However, I don't have to retract the following shameful statistics:

Time elapsed since premiere of Mary Poppins:

15,737 days.

Time elapsed since a Brit mentioned D.V.D.'s accent:

9 days