Mimicking Trev'

There's grog of his choice and hot n cold bed mates awaiting the excellent Rod Liddle if he comes Corfuciosa way.

He's my kinda columnist and bravo the Spectator for fielding him - write on, Mr Liddle!

But I wasn't going to make any deal over his 'outrage' piece until I read the idiocy over Mimickgate and some news reader called McDonald.

That's McD's mug shot there: as you see, our boy was born under sunnier skies so we know where this  cockamamie crock of curry-n-rice is headed.

Rod had written that,

"Pretty much every day in your morning newspapers you will find somebody, somewhere, calling for a public apology and a sacking and preferably a prosecution for the crime of having said something which the complainant did not agree with, or failed to find funny (there are a lot of people who find nothing whatsoever funny), or which hit some sort of nerve which made him or her take offence. The ability to shrug off stuff we find offensive and move on has apparently deserted us; we have become preternaturally sensitive to almost everything. And it diminishes the freedom of speech and thought."

Spot on but what's new?

Then I read about one 'Lisa Aziz' - "the first Asian news presenter to appear on national terrestrial television", moaning that a Steve Scott

“regularly mimicked” the famous Afro-Caribbean newsreader’s accent during rehearsals."

"Terrestrial"? New one on me - sounds ominously trekky.

But So?

The man has the dullest voice going and anyone taking him off is attempting a Peter Sellers. He's a marmalade wannabe Dimbleby without the convincing gravitas.

Golli - wha' the frink's wrong with sending the cove up. He's never likely to deliver such levity himself.

"Scott, a former ITN Africa correspondent and a regular presenter of ITV’s lunchtime and weekend news bulletins, is also alleged, in papers prepared for an employment tribunal, to have imitated Pakistani and Irish accents and the accent of Alex Beresford, the black ITV weatherman."

Oirish, you say, begorrah? Now you're treading on thin ice.

I can wheel out a passable *Indian* when the occasion calls - thanks to Afsar at my first school, but Paki eludes me on the subtler vowel curves.

But they're talking "internal investigation into allegations of racism."

Do grow up. Accentism, maybe - unless you get it spot on it's a flop. at ITV West Country in Bristol where Aziz and Scott co-presented the nightly news programme until she was suspended over alleged expenses irregularities in June.

"Scott declined to comment on the claims." Quite right, too. Best not be dragged down to such farcical depths.

"But he has told friends that he has never imitated McDonald and his imitations of other colleagues are in good humour and “definitely not racist”.

See what I mean about nailing that tricky Paki patina of pinched patter?

Of course it's not racist - Rod gets it - most card-carrying racists I know haven't the faintest talent for mimickry. If you can do it, it's like playing an instrument, the sheer pleasure of getting your gottals round another mode de parler is what you're after.

I wish I could do hieland: Dougal Haston gave me endless classes but I just couldn't hack it.

Russian is another slippery one, you have to get it bang on or you sound like that jerk Robin Williams.

I was born in Sydney but I had a mate from Port Phillip so my accent is better on Melbourne. I also do a spot-on Kiwi: you have to close your mouth even more - think S'th Efrik'n and give it a whisper more of air and you've got it.

Ms Aziz says she was “set up” by senior ITV managers on a bogus expenses-fiddling charge.

Don't talk to me about expenses fiddling: I lived off expenses, bedded my birds on stolen company dosh ... I *own* Bogus Funding.

So back to 'Expenses' Lisa, the tanned and grey-toned, all-too terrestrial Trevopoulos ... and the farcial monkey-business of Mimickgate.

They say Azi Macky Paki; I prefer the jungle rhythms of Eena Meena Deeka

Scott a former Africa correspondent: Bloody hell, I've only just spotted the Daily Mail's clue that Scottie was a correspondent over there - I know, I know, McD is calypso rather than cauldron. So of course the raffish Steve would be able to mimic for his mango.

The Mail also has a pic of Scott with a smashing young lady called Derham so they definitely get plugged in the form of a link.

Silly billies, if only everyone had said so in the first place, all would have been understood: Scott wasn't being racioso to Trev' 'Dingolay' McD, he was just trying to get the entrancing Kate to laugh herself into his bed. Look at that hottie - I'd try some bad accents, too, if I thought it'd work.

Oh man! Thank de lawd day light she come! All just a big storm in a cup o' mauby.