Watch an American guy attempt a Geordie accent on US TV show

Watch below as Alistair, as Greg Gascoyne in the American TV show Castle fails embarrassingly at trying to imitate a Geordie accent.

The show, set in New York, first premiered in 2009 and has been watched by over 10 million viewers consecutively over its seven series. An eighth series started in September last year and is still running.

The video sparked outrage across Tyneside when Richard Castle, the main character played by Nathan Fillion, came into contact with Alistair – a cab driver who was supposed to be from Newcastle. People have since commented, stating that the imitation “sounds like a cross between Irish and Scottish” and “like the first ever Gaelic Pakistani”.

The video soon wriggled its way onto YouTube, where it attracted comments such as “this shit is radioactive” and “this is the worst thing that has ever happened”.

After receiving a barrage of “howays” from the Geordie community, the show’s assistant writer Nick Hurwitz defended himself, stating “I’ve gotta say, Gregry B [the actor] crushed it”. But the accent is even awful enough to confuse YouTube’s subtitles feature.

Even the subtitles have no idea what he’s going on about

One of the show’s other characters described the Geordie accent as “technically English, but unique at the same time”.

It’s prompted Newcastle University linguistics professor Dr Danielle Turton to speak out: “it’s absolutely dreadful”, she told The Chronicle. However, Turton did admit that Geordie is, in fact, one of the hardest dialects to try and imitate.

“The Geordie accent is also littered with stereotypes such as ‘howay’ and ‘way-aye’, meaning imitators and actors focus too much on those words and not on the structural nuances and phonetic features that make up the Geordie accent”.