RPCV

I can't remember the last time I actually had to write a CV. These days I update my credits, or what I been up to, on my webpage, and my agent keeps an up-to-date CV as something that they can send out when they're suggesting me for things.

A simple one-page document that tells people what I've been in, who I have worked with in terms of directors, and when I did it. With a lot of credits, it's easy to be able to be selective, and keeping the document on one page makes sure that it always gets read.

It wasn't always so easy to keep my CV this simple. In fact I seem to remember  times in my career when I have had many many less credits, and yet those were the times when there seemed too much to include. Such as on leaving drama school. At this point in your career you're very keen to sell yourself. To whoever and for whatever. Therefore you don't want to rule out any options, and you're frightened that anything you don't mention on your CV may mean you miss out.

Take for example the matter of accent. We all have one by birth, and whether we are proud of it or not, that is the accent that we can place a small Asterix by and call native*. Native from the word Natal i.e. the place where one was born. Mine is Yorkshire. South Yorkshire. The Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. That is my native accent. Alreet?

I have noticed that an awful lot of this year's drama graduates were born in a place I've never heard of. That is the town of RP. I'm assuming that's where they were born as on their CV it states that RP is their native accent. Strange then that I can't find this place on any map, google or otherwise. It doesn't even feature on the notoriously unreliable Apple maps. And yet it must exist, because if it is giving rise to a native accent it must be a place.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps, just perhaps, some people have got it wrong. RP Stands for Received Pronunciation. It's not "The Queens English" or "BBC English" and it is not an accent as such that people are born with.

It is an accent in which you should, after three years at a drama school, be proficient. It should certainly be among your range of skills, but it certainly shouldn't be marked as native. Some hint of the region where you were born will most probably colour your native accent, and it will be all the better for it. Think of the glorious tones of Hopkins or Burton, underpinned by the luscious Welsh valleys, or the fabulous comic timbre of Routledge or Walters, layering over their North West origins, and all the richer for it too.

Where you are from is part of who you are, and who you are is what people want to try and begin to ascertain from your cv. Who you are is what will get you the job. Don't try and be everything to all people. Jack of all trades, master of none, is an aphorism as apt in the casting process as in the world of the domestic handyman. Finding out who you are can take time. It probably took me until just before my 40th birthday to even begin to know. Yet one thing that is pretty sure is how you speak.

My mother, who mercifully had aspirations above her standing, sent me to elocution classes from the age of eleven. Her desire was to have me talk 'properly'. I don't know how well it worked. On meeting the South London landfall that is the wonderful Timothy Spall when we were both seventeen, his one remark was "You're good but you talk funny".  Ah, the North South divide!

Those early elocution lessons (incidentally with a teacher in Rotherham whose star pupil had been Brian Blessed!) did however give me a good start when we moved on to learning RP phonetically at drama school, and as better ears than mine failed to attack the diphthong correctly, I sailed ahead - so well done Mother!

These days most people know I'm Northern even with the miss mash of Northern RP and theatrical camp that is my default...and I'm proud of it Mercifully I'm offered work that allows me to play to my two strengths. Northern or Posh. Sometimes a casting director will really push the envelope and get me up for something that is Posh Northern.

So just be careful where you place those asterisks on that CV.  You can only have one native accent. And RP is a skill you should be proud. Just don't get the two muddled up.

The only way I could track down RP is by car registration numbers. RP is the car registration tag for Northampton. 

Now that's a thought.