Twenty four year old John Richards from Harrow shocked friends at a class re-union last year, by reading out a Chinese Restaurant’s takeaway menu without deviating from his own whiney outer-London accent - which has been likened to Ken Livingstone’s, minus the sincerity.
“Like most teenagers I’d dabbled with ‘Flied Lice’, which Mr Chu at our local chinky always found hilarious. I’d thought I could control it but before long I was regularly using ‘Clispy Duck’. By the time I got to Uni. I was onto daily ‘Swee’sow Por’ Balls’.”
Richards’ tutor-group at Oxford met at Paddy’s Really Irish Pub. “Paddy’s a real Irishman you know and he was often in stitches over my interpretation of Michael Flatley dance routines, especially when accompanied by impressions from Father Ted. ‘Oh, go on, go on, go on -will you not have some beer Father?’ was one of his favourites.”
“I was in deep trouble though, when our hall of residence had a Pink Panther video weekend. Trying to deal with Inspector Clouseau’s French accent as well as Cato’s – he was from Japan, China, Vietnam, well somewhere like that - created a ‘perfect storm’ and I was detained in Hospital under the Mental Health Act, which was followed by regular analysis to get it finally dealt with.”
Richards says he is now fully cured. Having recently moved out of his mother’s home he is busy developing a new friendship group not based on silly accents. He is full of praise for Robert Schmidt, his Austrian analyst “Zat Doktor Schmidt iss ve’y gutt, yah? Oh, bugger!”