Last updated 15:13, Tuesday, 05 February 2008

THIS week I have been tempted to chuck a brick through the television and cancel my licence.

The reason? The blatant southern bias shown by the majority of the channels - especially the BBC. If Northern licence money isn’t good enough for them, let them do without, as my granny used to say.

My resentment had been simmering since before Christmas when I came across a programme on one of the satellite channels.

It had originally been shown on Channel 4 and was all about Vince Peart, a young man from Alston who gained national fame a couple of years ago when he launched a high-profile internet search to find a soulmate.

Vince came across as an articulate lad. His dad, a coalman, was a great character with a wonderful Cumbrian accent that was a joy to listen to - but every time he spoke, subtitles appeared on the screen as though he were speaking a foreign language.

It made my blood boil. Does the BBC subtitle EastEnders, which I gave up watching years ago because of the unintelligible Cockey speech, glottal stops and dropped consonants?

No it does not.

Does it subtitle footballers when they mangle the English language when they are interviewed after a match?

Ditto.

So why use subtitles for someone speaking with a Cumbrian accent?

I have a good mind to write to Melvyn Bragg - who says in his book The Adventure of English that he used to speak with a strong accent, and indeed used lots of dialect words - and urge him to use his influence to stop this bias.

The second thing that upset me was the weather forecast.

The BBC weather woman told us that the good news was that the South East would have a mild day - and the even better news (pointing to map in which Cumbria was obscured by cloud) was that any heavy rain would be confined to ‘the far North West’.

So that’s all right then. As long as they’re dry in the South, why worry about the rest of us?

As far as they are concerned we will be busy painting on woad in our caves, so it won’t matter.

That’s my ranting done. I was going to write to the BBC and vent my ire - but , as my late Aunt Adeline used to say, ah’s ower thrang.