Don’t mock me because I’m cockney – we can ‘sound posh’ too

I was born within the sound of Bow bells (but you’d think I was related to the Queen). That’s just one of the wonderful things about being cockney, writes Rosamund Hall – we come in all shapes, sounds and sizes...

‘People I meet travelling often marvel that they’ve never actually met a real cockney, because I wasn’t what they were expecting’ (Getty)

I am a cockney and proud of it. I was born within the sound of Bow bells – and Tower Hamlets adorns my birth certificate. It’s something that I tell people wherever I travel when they ask where I come from – and they often marvel that they’ve never actually met a real cockney, before. But then, they swiftly add that I wasn’t entirely what they were expecting. Why? Well, because I sound like I could be related to the Queen.

If you chat to me, the first thing you might notice is how posh my voice is: I enunciate my words beautifully and sound rather elegant (if I do say so myself). Yet I’m definitely not from landed gentry and I don’t have posh parents (my mother’s from Stoke-on-Trent and my dad’s from Scarborough). In fact, I grew up in east London – but I’ve always prided myself on speaking properly. As a result, I sound quite “plummy” – but I love it.

My best friend’s mother (who is also a cockney) told me when we were growing up that I sounded more like Margo from The Good Life than a proper cockney... and I took it as a compliment. Penelope Keith sounds lovely to me – how about you?