OK, I'm from Belfast, and for whatever reason, hate hearing the Ulster/Northern Ireland/Northern Irish/whatever you wanna call it accent on TV, radio etc. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's absolutely fine (Andrea Catherwood springs to mind), but more often than not I find it really annoying (your woman from Girls Aloud )...

It's not just me either if my mates and my workplace are anything to go by... So, being completely honest, has it been known to annoy you, whether it was someone you were talking to or just on TV or whatever

Does Christine Bleakley have an Ulster accent? If so, then no

See, she's one of the tolerable ones cos the accent's softer

Though dating Lampard is a mark against her

I don't know which accent is which, but I like the softer accent. I have Irish Cathy on the TomTom, because I like it when she tells me to go roond the roondaboot.

On the other hand, I can think of a couple of angry sounding people you can hear from across the water without needing a phone.

I think it's the same with the Scottish accents; the softer ones are rather pleasing. The angry ones are rather grating.

In all seriousness, chances are the ones that sound angry aren't even

I bet most people haven't even heard a proper Ulster or Northern Irish accent.
The nearest they'll probably have come to it is hearing Ian Paisley on the telly.

Mark

Some of the Northern Irish people I've met have had really whiney accents which I find annoying. But I generally quite like the Irish accent...

The Irish accent has very little - if nothing - to do with the NI accent.
The whineyness is probably because the NI accent is very nasal.

Mark

I must admit, I haven't been able to make the distinction between and Irishman and a Northern Irishman based on their accents. Though perhaps if they were standing next to each other it may have been more apparent...

You'd pick one from the other very quickly indeed in that situation, believe me.
Though to be fair, a proper southern Irish accent can be very difficult to understand as well. Most people these days tend to only hear the soft Dublin accent.

Mark

My granddad was a proper Southern Irishman. Boy, he could be hard to understand!

I like all accents and dialects, apart from Mockney. Oh, at the risk of being branded racist, the munged Afro-Caribbean crossed with south Asian that most yoofs of all colours these days delight in, because it makes dem rad an' street innit.

I've not been exposed to alot of NI accents, the ones I have generally sound like there's a hint of Scottish in there. Mind you, considering the history of NI it's not surprising.

Annoying? Irish, no. Scouse, yes

Really? Have you tried having a conversation with someone that speaks in a proper Irish accent, not the washed out Dublin accent?

Mark

It's like speaking to someone from the west coast of Scotland. Even after nine years offshore I still have to try to pick out key words and make a sentence from them. Glaswegian is easy to understand by comparison.