Paddy McGuinness

[percheron67]

I switched BBC 1 on early and am waiting for Casualty. The programme on at the moment is hosted AGAIN by Paddy McGuinness. He is rarely off the screen and I cannot understand it! He has a simply dreadful dialect and will keep sounding a hard G in singing. Apart from that he yells at the top of his (Very unattractive) voice. How on earth does this man keep a job on television?

If people on here think that Paddy McG has an overexaggerated Bolton accent, where would you put Fred Dibnah's?! Or are you all too young to remember him?

Re the different pronunciations of singer/singing: On the show, you could hear the difference if you listen to how Paddy and Alison pronounce ‘singer’ compared to how Jimmy and Amanda pronounce it. Paddy obviously has a Bolton accent and Alison a Midlands accent, both of which put the hard ‘g’ in the middle of the word. Amanda and Jimmy both have Southern accents and wouldn’t pronounce a hard g in the middle.

@Guavafish

I like the accent

But Amanda holdens face 😱

I'm going to have to google her current face. Last time I saw her she was looking quite fillery and botoxy already.

Was it true though about the All saints? Some people believe that was a cover for Holly W

I really dislike the snobbery on threads like this. Bolton accents on television? Mothers being models and concerned about their children's disabilities? Oh how very unmumsnetty.
FWIW I really like Paddy but I doubt he'd cry himself to sleep if I didn't.

@x2boys

Him and Peter Kay attended the same high school my son currently attends MSJ ,we also had my oldest boys christening at the phoenix club so I'm clearly biased

It was up Deane when they were there though, before it moved to English Martyrs site

@Svalberg

If people on here think that Paddy McG has an overexaggerated Bolton accent, where would you put Fred Dibnah's?! Or are you all too young to remember him?

I watched a video on Youtube of him recently where he was scaling a 1000ft chimney on a rickety ladder. I felt ill just watching it.

[quote balloonsandboobies]@percheron67 in that part of the north west there is a hard g in singing. Singer / finger rhyme.
He may be annoying but it's it a bit rude to complain about his accent. He talks like someone from Bolton, which is where he's from. What accents are acceptable to you? [/quote]
Yes I agree. I personally find him irritating. But I do think it's rude to comment on his accent. He can hardly help that! As a pp says, I wonder if people aren't used to northern accents on tv 🤷‍♀️

I'm from Bolton and can officially confirm that his accent is authentic. And if you don't like it, watch something else. I alwsys turn Keith Lemon off 'cause I hate the way he talks.

@Giantrooster

Foreigner here, I can't understand why you would choose two hosts with thick thick accents/dialects for a worldwide broadcasted programme. Doesn't make it easier to understand.

I think English is quite lovely when spoken well, and I know there should be room for various dialects, but the new top gear really is an abomination to listen to.

Which British accent do you find acceptable @Giantrooster ?!!!

@Giantrooster you may be surprised to hear that in the UK more people are "thick accented" than sound like the queen. They all have a British accent. So if you want to watch a British TV programme then you'll just have to deal with listening to those darn British accents

@PureAndEasy

I'm from Bolton and can officially confirm that his accent is authentic. And if you don't like it, watch something else. I alwsys turn Keith Lemon off 'cause I hate the way he talks.

And that's pretty much how Leigh Francis talks like in real life. Authentic but annoying!

Love him as part of the new top gear team, I think they work really well together. I havent watched him on the singing/sinGing programme as it didnt appeal but hes surely got to be better than Gordon Ramsay ?
Lots of presenters seem to be everywhere at the moment
Katherine Ryan
Romesh Ranganathan
Rob Beckett
Tom Allen
Phillip Schofield
Holly Willoughby
Ant and Dec.
I do find Romesh and Rob hilarious though, (I'm less keen on Romesh on ranganation) and Tom Allen.

The Finger/Singer debate is a recurring problem on MN. What complicates things is that some people (mostly midlanders but also some northerners) can’t hear the difference at all - something about their infant language acquisition means they can’t distinguish the sounds as adults, like the Japanese with r and l (or most anglophones with a whole bunch of sounds from other languages).

DH is a midlander and although he actually says finger and singer more or less correctly in the southern style he can’t hear any difference between them and gets quite cross when I say that there is, even if I give examples face to face. He’s a decent mimic and competent linguist, so not normally lacking in this stuff but he’s got a total blind spot on this one.

I've never known there was another pronunciation of singer other than to rhyme with finger and yes the explanations on this thread have been crap. Stop saying it's wrong to pronounce it with a hard g as though the alternative is a soft g like giraffe. I've now discovered there are differences I hadn't known before and yes, I've moved out of my village or whatever patronising shite someone came up with. The real reasons I've never noticed are more likely due to the map a pp posted which showed that the rhyming pronunciation is actually very common, the fact that the word singing isn't a usual topic of conversation i'd have and the fact it's quite a subtle difference in accent as opposed to the various other more obvious ones I have when I visit different areas.

Absolutely love Top Gear with Chris, Paddy and Freddie. So funny and none of the nastiness from the jeremy idiot.

'Stop saying it's wrong to pronounce it with a hard g as though the alternative is a soft g like giraffe'

Giraffe begins with a J sound. No one has said finger has a J sound.

Although maybe in some very out of the way Devonian hamlet it does.

(it doesn't)

I love Devon, although side with Cornwall on the cream/jam situation.

She has a slight speech impediment which has been made worse with those lip fillers! Yikes

Peter Kay?

@Giantrooster

Foreigner here, I can't understand why you would choose two hosts with thick thick accents/dialects for a worldwide broadcasted programme. Doesn't make it easier to understand.

I think English is quite lovely when spoken well, and I know there should be room for various dialects, but the new top gear really is an abomination to listen to.

I wish all foreigners would speak the same language so I’d only have to learn one

Personally I love Paddy’s accent (I’m a southerner). I actually quite like the show too. Typical Saturday night silliness.

Well, it has been a little while since we had anti-north thread, so I guess we were due a chance for all the southerns to declare how awful the accent is and how we have never bloody leave our caves in the north

I’m from Bolton and lived there for 18 years. I’ve been to university, once up north and once in the south. I’ve lived in Cambridgeshire for the last 10 years, worked in London and Reading. I’ve travelled. I can’t work out the finger and singer thing because they sound exactly the same. I can’t recall a time in my life noticing someone pronouncing it differently but then again I’ve never been as bothered as southerns seem to be with regional variations of words. I have also never been picked up for how I say singer but I’ve been picked up (by southerners) for how I say a number of other words. But oh no, someone from Bolton can never leave and if they do and somehow make a success of them we must despise them because they have an appalling accent.

I’m so pissed off with the constant belittling of the north on MN. The south isn’t that great either.

I have slept on it and still don’t understand the finger singer thing.
I’m in Worcestershire maybe that’s the problem?