Almost, but not quite, as they still retain a little bit of their east London dialect, and accents, and they are all over 30+years old.That sounds almost Yam-Yam....
Mate, I've got an East Anglian accent which is about as far as you can get from yours and yet most Yanks think I'm an Aussie too! Silly buggers...Born and bred in Glasgow and come complete with the Rab.c. Nesbitt accent to prove it, however, have lost count of the amount of times I've been asked by Yanks whereabouts in Australia I'm from -WTF?
I worked at First Direct in Leeds for a while when I was at uni. They told us that they did loadsa market research to find the most pleasing British accent in order to make it pleasing ans acceptable to customers. West Yorkshire, they landed in West Yorkshire..............nothing to do with govt backhanders to try and get the unemployment down, oh dearie me no.
Were there grants available in the Home Counties?In a similar vein I posted this about six years ago:
In the late 80s I worked for an IT company which was looking at setting up call centre based outsourcing deals (or FM then) in deprived parts of the UK (pre-India days) to milk the Government grants.They commissioned a firm of occupational psychologists to assess people's reactions to regional accents as part of the planning.The results were kept fairly quiet but amounted pretty much to people hated most regional male accents but didn't mind some of the female ones.Nobody liked any Scouse accents.Brummies of both sexes were regarded as "sounding thick".Female Scottish, Geordie, Welsh and West Country accents were the most liked.For what it's worth they started out in the North East.They didn't look at Home Counties RP as that would have won hands down.
Were there grants available in the Home Counties?
Plymouth? HQ OS was built in a recently vacated former barracks half a mile from me when I moved to Southampton in the 80s. The purpose built building looks 60s-70s architecture:Oddly enough there were.
Mostly around the shitty seaside towns.
Which is why things like the Dental Estimates Board was moved to Eastbourne, OS was moved to Plymouth (obviously not SE but south at least). There are other examples but I am buggered if I can remember them after 35 years..
Plymouth? HQ OS was built in a recently vacated former barracks half a mile from me when I moved to Southampton in the 80s. The purpose built building looks 60s-70s architecture:
This ⬆ off Google Street view now, but OS moved out about ten years ago, half a mile the other side of me. This site is derelict.
How can I be sure it was a barracks? My neighbour, now deceased, an original occupant of these houses, told me. Plus, if you could see it (on Street View no picture was taken down the street though the recently built houses toward this building in the middle of the new estate):
https://w3w.co/text.luxury.fully
(HQ OS is the hollow square building a few metres south.) If you could see this building, you'd just know it was an RHQ building in the style popular 120 years ago, and universal in Tidworth in the 70s.
An American speaksI can only assume the N Irish accents aren't being included here. I once my North Belfast accent described as being 'like a duck getting anger-fucked'.
I have conducted this experiment, albeit in my late twenties; fish in a barrel.