BBC Steph talks tough after jibe at her accent
GONE are the days of tuning into the BBC to find only hosts with perfect cut-glass accents.
But one presenter’s regional lilt is clearly not yet to everybody’s taste.
Teessider Steph McGovern brushed off criticism from a disgruntled viewer who complained she pronounces the word ‘here’ wrong.
The viewer, identified as Trevor, emailed the presenter to inform her the ‘one word that you mangle’ had bothered him, claiming she pronounced ‘here’ as ‘heyah’ with two syllables instead of one.
Miss McGovern, 37, who hails from Middlesbrough, uploaded the email to social media where she joked that Trevor could ‘one syllable’ off.
‘Despite what Trev thinks, how I say the word “here” is all about my accent so he can one syllable off,’ she wrote.
Trevor’s message read: ‘Please don’t get me wrong, I like you and think you do a very good job and I’m not being patronising there.
‘Your accent doesn’t bother me apart from one word that you mangle. “Here”. You say “heyah”.
‘Sorry, but could you please just say “here” as one syllable. You don’t have to put on a posh accent.
‘Just say the word as it’s meant to be said. Thank you.’
It is not the first time Miss McGovern, who this week revealed she is expecting a child with her girlfriend, has received complaints about her accent. In 2015, she told how she had received a letter that read ‘Dear Ms McGovern, I watched you on BBC Breakfast. I’m sorry about your terrible affliction. Here’s £20 towards correction therapy’. She added: ‘The affliction they were talking about was my accent.’
She previously claimed she would earn more as a BBC presenter if she did not have a north-east accent.