Monkey Talk

The audiobook of Bait has just been released by W F Howes. 

It is a strange experience to hear your words read out by someone else. In my case the narrator is an actor called Ben Onwukwe, who fans of the fire brigade drama London’s Burning may recall played the part of, er,  “Recall”. 

It can’t have been an easy gig: the book has a vast cast of characters, with accents ranging from Kenyan to Kazakhstani, via Jo’burg, New York, Kinshasa and Sarf Lahndan. 

Mr Onwukwe, it must be said, deals with them all expertly. His only downfall is Jake Moore’s Geordie accent. 

But then Geordie, for some reason, is the one that scuppers everybody – and I include the likes of Rory Bremner and Harry Enfield in the list of luminaries who have tried and failed to get it right. 

In attempting to capture what they think is its peculiar sing-song nature, those born south of the Tyne invariably overcompensate, resulting in a bizarre hybrid of Teesside and orang-utan. 

This has always struck me as odd, as most Geordies of my acquaintance speak in the same flat drone as Alan Shearer. 

For the record the Oscar for Best Attempt by a Southerner was by London-born Mark Strong, when he played Tosker in Our Friends in the North.   

The worst? I’m afraid that was Newcastle-born actor Jimmy Nail, who, during his heyday in the early 1990s (remember Spender?), swapped his thick brogue for what’s known on Tyneside as “posh Geordie” and ended up sounding like he was from Tucson, Arizona. 

Anyway, for more details of the audiobook check out:  www.wfhowes.co.uk . Happy listening.