Americans think Glaswegian accent is the sexiest, according to new poll

Britons find the New York accent most attractive

Fictional Glaswegian Rab C Nesbitt (BBC)

Americans find the Glaswegian accent the sexiest in Britain - despite the fact 22 per cent of them wrongly identified it as Scouse.

The tone of Edinburgh-born Sean Connery’s voice was the US's favourite among individual Britons, while fellow actors Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley came second and third.

According to the British Airways poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans and 1,000 Britons about their opinion of accents, 23 per cent of the American respondents ranked Glaswegian as the sexiest, followed by the Cockney accent, with 16 per cent of the vote.

27%

The percentage of Americans who found the British accent sophisticated

They were also very complimentary of the English accent, with 37 per cent perceiving it as the most intelligent and more than a quarter finding it sophisticated. The Essex accent was viewed as the least attractive, garnering just 7 per cent of the vote.

Although Britons found the New York accent the sexiest, they thought Morgan Freeman, from Tennessee, had the best tone of voice in the US.

The New York accent was also the most identifiable for Britons, unlike the Canadian dialect - which 40 per cent of respondents thought was Texan.

The survey also revealed the geographical knowledge of each nation. Around 40 per cent of Americans could locate London on a map, whereas only 20 per cent of Britons could do the same for New York.

“It’s surprising that although New York is British Airways’ most popular long-haul destination, only one in five Brits could correctly find it on a map,” said Sara Dunham, British Airways’ head of marketing, retail and direct.

A survey carried out by YouGov in December 2014 showed Britons had very different views to Americans on which accents were most attractive.

British adults ranked the Glaswegian accent as the fifth-worse of the 12 main accents in the British Isles. The ‘Brummie’ accent was perceived as the least attractive and Southern Irish, the most.