Colm O'Regan: Saturday Night Live UK and how to do a not terrible Irish accent

Colm O'Regan: 'For the record, in the sketch called "What Kind of Irish is your Grandad", George Fouracres does four accents: Dublin, Northern (it’s an Orangeman and sounds a bit too Fenian, but we’ll leave him off), an oul lad threatening to fight you — with a pitch-perfect “bastherds”, and then he sings Óro se do bheath abhaile'

Whatever about the rest of Saturday Night Live UK, I’m now a fan of George Fouracres. For a start, because of his surname. You won’t forget it. Even the fact he’s called FourAcres makes me feel like he understands road frontage.

But the clincher is: he’s an English comedy actor who can do a fairly good Irish accent. In fact, he can do four of them and they’re not bad at all.

This might seem like faint praise, but to find a non-Irish person who can do an Irish accent in a comedy sketch is a big deal. That’s enough for them to be grand marshal of the Patrick’s Day parade. They’ll get two goes of the Late Late and one Tommy Tiernan appearance out of it.

We are often mistaken for being offended by terrible Irish accents, but personally speaking, it’s not that I’m fragile or hurt by them. I’m just annoyed to see something we do well being done badly.

My attitude to a bad Irish accent is like when you get a tradesman in, and they look at the complete hames you made of the job when you tried it yourself. They turn to look at you, almost hurt, as if to say, ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’

For the record, in the sketch called ‘What Kind of Irish is your Grandad’, George Fouracres does four accents: Dublin, Northern (it’s an Orangeman and sounds a bit too Fenian, but we’ll leave him off), an oul lad threatening to fight you — with a pitch-perfect “bastherds”, and then he sings Óro se do bheath abhaile. The only dodgy bit is probably where he sings made-up Irish for the verses, but even that is phonetically accurate, unlike the “curry my yoghurt” crap you get from the DUP.

The sketch is mad. It makes no sense. It probably works better if you’re UK-Irish, but the main thing is: the accent is not shite. Hello, Saturday Night Live US, please take note. Your Irish accents have been appalling for 40 years. In fact, they’re so bad that when there are Irish actors on it, THEIR accent is worse. Paul Mescal was in one recently, and they had him saying, ‘LAD’. But when it’s not. It’s ‘led’.

But SNL US will continue to do them every St Patrick’s Day. They’ll trot out the same pirate, Scottish, Devon, Braveheart, Russell Crowe in Robin Hood muck. It’s so bad, we crave Darby O’Gill.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s how to do a not terrible Irish accent:

Yes, we pronounce the ‘r’. But take it handy. It’s ‘letter’, not ‘lettaaaarrr’. We’re not pirates. Yes, our th-s are not Oxford ‘faavah’ or ‘muvvvah’, but not all of us are ‘DE FAAADURRR’. Just relax with the ‘turty-tree anna turd’. 

And for the hard ‘th’ like in father, no, we don’t say the Cockney ‘faavah’ or Oxford ‘fazzah’ but neither do we all say ‘faaadur’ all the time. We do not all say ‘laddie’. We are not the bent cop in LA Confidential. 

If you want to get an honour (Leaving Cert, not New Year’s), aspirate the ‘t’, soften it. Imagine a dote and a dose. Go halfway between the two. We’re a short-As people. Bath is BATT or BATH and not BAAAAWF. We pronounce ‘boat’ as ‘bote’ and not ‘beowt’. But it’s not BOOOOOAT. 

It’s not a longboat. And for goodness sake, relax with the feck. We use it, but not as a substitute for other words. If we want to substitute for other words, we say f**k. We do say ‘ye’, but again, not like Captain Jack Sparrow.

Basically, what I’m saying is: Whatever you think the Irish accent is, half of it will do. It’s Fouracres, not hectares.