Chris Gregory, 30, shocked his family by belting out a version of Irish ballad Danny Boy from his hospital bed, even though he has never visited the country. Greeting his wife Mary with “It’s da broid’, he continued to speak in the new accent for 30 minutes until his normal voice returned.
Mr Gregory’s strange behaviour – apparently the result of a rare condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome – lifted the mood of the intensive care ward at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital where he was recovering from surgery to correct a life-threatening blood vessel rupture in his brain.
“All the nurses were trying really hard not to laugh, and I was too. I just couldn’t take it in at first, it seemed so comical, but it didn’t matter at all because I’d been so worried about losing him altogether,” Mrs Gregory, 36, told the Mail.
Telegraph (Thanks Katherine)
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That is me! Katherine aka KatM
Boy this changing name is a right palaver.
That sounds great! (Not the surgery part)
I think weed can cause that too…
What accent change would you wish for?
I suspect my ‘south somewhere’ nice English accent would be transformed into a north-east one, Sunderland Macam to be precise rather than Newcastle Geordie, as I’m rather good at mimicking my other half.
I have a very strange accent. Most people I meet ask if I’m American or Canadian. I think it’s from when I was younger I picked up the local Nottingham accent and forced myself to change it! Can’t be doing with “Ayup me duck”
Can it also make you a stereotype-spouting characature? Ok, maybe that’s too far, but “It’s the broid”? Really??
I would pay good money for this treatment… the only way I come close to mimicing a Geordie accent (or anything north of the Watford gap for that matter) is if I insert the word “leek” into every sentence, y’know leek.
It doesn’t fool anyone leek. “Day twenty eeit in the Big Brother House leek”. See. It’s rubbish. Someone whack me round the head!
Flapjack: Thwackkkkk. Done. Feeling better now?
@ Simon… my thoughts exactly, he’ll be saying ‘top of the mornin to ya’ next… (we really never say that!)
Katherine aka KatM – Waie aye leek! I’m feeling well Geordie now leek. I’m off down Beeker Groove now to give it the road test, Ta!