Secret BBC list identifies ‘Britain's most hated accent'

Telegraph

12-04-2025

The BBC ranked the Birmingham accent the 'most hated' on a secret league table, a veteran war correspondent has revealed.
Kate Adie said accents were 'one of the country's complex matters' and stressed that they 'vary hugely and how they are received varies hugely.'
Speaking at an event marking the cataloguing of a vast archive of material documenting her life and career at the University of Sunderland, the 79-year-old added: 'Years and years ago, the BBC had an unofficial league table of the most liked and the most hated accents.
'The view was that some of them drove people nuts up and down the country.'
Adie, one of the BBC's most popular war reporters, asked her audience to guess the most disliked accent. A chorus of 'Birmingham' followed.
The 79-year-old explained: 'From one end of the country to another, it's Birmingham! Michael Buerk, who comes from Birmingham, was once asked why he didn't use the accent. He said, 'I didn't want death threats'.'
However, she told the event that Geordie was generally well-liked.
Previous research initiated by BBC News revealed that most newsreaders across the corporation, as well as ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, speak with received pronunciation (RP).
University Challenge host Amol Rajan revealed the research in 2022 and challenged Tim Davie, the BBC's director-general, to correct an on-air 'accent bias.'
At the time, Mr Davie said the statistical bias towards RP was 'not particularly [surprising].'
RP was adopted as the BBC standard in 1922 and was once regarded as the most 'typically British' accent. However, it is now spoken by just 2 per cent of the population.
Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire said she was proud of her Lancashire accent but admitted she feared her voice was 'too Northern' to advance at the BBC.
Adie, who was raised in Sunderland, admitted she never had a strong accent, nor did her parents, who adopted her as a baby.
She also revealed dissertations could be written on news programme accents and recalled her days at BBC Radio Durham when a locally accented producer would read the bulletin.
'We got complaints from everywhere,' she added.
Adie's career at the BBC spanned 34 years, during which time she covered conflicts from China to Libya, Kosovo to Kuwait.
Some of her most significant assignments included reporting on the Iranian Embassy siege in May 1980 and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
After complaining about the growing preoccupation with television journalists' looks, she stepped down as the BBC's chief news correspondent in 2003.
At the time, she said bosses were obsessed with 'cute faces and cute bottoms and nothing else in between.'
Adie's archive includes more than 2,300 objects, including dozens of notebooks, video clips, tapes, letters, and photographs. It was donated to the University of Sunderland several years ago, but funding to catalogue the items properly only came last year.
Speaking about her life's work being documented in her home city, Adie said: 'My life was shaped by my childhood in Sunderland, and I've wanted to show some of the very happy memories, starting at home in Tunstall Park and including two bomb fragments, embedded in our sideboard, which thankfully arrived two years before my appearance.
'A reporter does not usually have much time to collect souvenirs, so it's an eclectic collection, but I hope it represents the extraordinarily varied stories I've covered, from wars to royal garden parties.'
Sir David Bell, vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland, said of Adie's collection: 'She [Kate Adie] is one of the most talented journalists and broadcasters of her generation and, as a native of Sunderland, her collection will be of interest both locally and further afield.'