Ex-Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher reveals his INCREDIBLY strong Irish accent in new interview as he admits he has to speak differently on Sky Sports and 'crank it down a bit with English people'
- Dermot Gallagher has opened up on hiding his strong Irish accent while working
- The former Premier League referee admits he has to 'crank down' his Dublin lull
- He revealed Sky Sports have spoken to him on his pronunciation on appearances
Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher has opened up on disguising his incredibly strong Irish accent throughout his career.
Gallagher officiated in England from 1985 to 2007, and spent 15 years as a top-flight official.
He also appears regularly as a pundit on Sky Sports News, breaking down the big refereeing decisions from the latest round of Premier League games.
Dermot Gallagher has revealed his strong Irish accent during an interview with Off the Ball
The 63-year-old admits that he got elocution instructions from Sky Sports on how to speak
In all his public appearances, Gallagher has possessed a generic English accent, however, speaking to Off the Ball this week, the 63-year-old revealed his genuine, strong Irish tones.
Gallagher explained to the Off the Ball podcast that his homegrown accent gets much stronger when speaking to fellow Irish people, and that he will often get a lot of stick from friends for the change in accent, depending on who he is speaking to.
After the show's presenter admitted he didn't realise the Irish accent had survived, Gallagher explained: 'Ah, well it's because I'm speaking to Irish people.
The Dublin-born whistler admitted he used to tone down his accent when speaking to others
'My best friend [fellow former referee] Alan Wiley gives me no end of stick, because I have to crank it down a bit with English people. It's quite ironic when my dad was alive, god bless him.
'One of my friends asked me: "Why do you talk Irish to your dad and English to us?"
'I went: "I don't!" I thought they were talking about Gaelic you see but they said: "No your accent changes". I said: "Well you wouldn't understand me". And they don't.
'When I first started on Sky TV they were very, very conscious of certain words I couldn't pronounce and I had to watch the BBC news.
'Words with 'th' I'd find very, very difficult so I'd have to practice. I'd be dreading them saying was it a 'Thursday' match and they were trying to explain to me there was an 'h' in the Thursday and it wasn't T-U-R-S.'
Gallagher was a Premier League ref for 15 years, taking charge of games from 1992 to 2007
Social media reacted with genuine amazement to the revelation on Thursday morning.
One Twitter user admitted the video had caused him utter confusion. 'That's quite literally blown my mind... never in a million years did I think he was Irish. I'm so confused.'
Another wrote: 'I always tort he was from Watford, not Waterford!'
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