Ex-Prem ref Dermot Gallagher’s ‘real accent’ exposed leaving fans baffled

It's Dermot Gallagher, but almost definitely how you've never heard him before!

After a 15-year Premier League career, Gallagher hung up his whistle in 2007 after taking charge of almost 400 games.

Following his retirement, the 63-year-old has maintained a regular fixture within English football, regularly appearing on TV to discuss the week's controversial decisions.

But in those media appearances, Gallagher has confirmed he has been toning down his Irish accent for fear that he wouldn't be understood by viewers.

Dublin-born Gallagher, speaking to Irish podcast Off the Ball, revealed that he has Anglicised his accent since childhood.

Questioned about his accent, he explained: “It’s because I’m talking to Irish people.

"My best mate gives me no end of stick. I have to crank it down with English people.

“It’s quite ironic, when my dad was alive, one of my friends said to me, “why do you talk Irish to your dad and talk English to us?’.

“And I said, ‘I don’t’, I was thinking about Gaelic you see and they went ‘no…your accent changes’ and I said ‘well you wouldn’t understand me’. And they don’t.

“When I first started on Sky TV, they were very very conscious about certain words I couldn’t pronounce and I had to watch the BBC News to try and…words with ‘th’ I found very difficult, so I’d have to practice.

“I’d be dreading saying it was a Thursday match, with them explaining to me there’s a letter ‘h’ in the word Thursday and it wasn’t ‘Turs’.”

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  • The clip on social media has already been viewed more than 200k times with fans on both sides of the Irish Sea as baffled as each other.

    One replied: "How did we not know? His name was Dermot ffs", while a second said: "OK that's just weird. He is on sky 3 times a week and sounds nothing like this….. Is he acting???? This is McClaren esque".

    "This is madness, sounds so different when he’s on sky", a third posted, with a fourth saying:" Genuinely checked if it was April 1. This is bonkers. Does he not think we can understand an Irish accent?!"

    "English people can't understand how we say tursday with no TH sound but yet they say Fursday", another joked.

    Source: Read Full Article