I can’t say I’ve lost any sleep over Cheryl Cole’s shattered American dream.

The woman’s loaded, has lovely shiny hair and is still the right side of 30, so my heart wasn’t bleeding when I heard that her much-hyped role as a judge on the US X Factor had ended almost as soon it began.

It seems that big cheese TV executives had a problem with Chezza’s Geordie accent. When she squealed things like “Yer soa quoot. Yer leik me lil bruvver,” to contestants on the British X Factor, she was crowned the nation’s sweetheart, but in America that kind of colloquialism isn’t quite so endearing.

In the UK we have a rich and varied landscape of regional accents; they define the history, heritage, culture and character of our counties and communities and should be cherished and nurtured. I’ve lived in various parts of the country and have always had a soft spot for local accents and quirky colloquialisms.

In the West Country, it took a bit of getting used to when bus drivers greeted me with “alright, my lover”, while in the East Midlands I was called “me duck”. And I was baffled by Midlanders’ varied descriptions of bread cakes, all different to the ones I’d grown up with in Yorkshire. As a child I sometimes stayed with cousins in Sussex, and was intrigued by the way they spoke. All Southern accents sounded the same – to me, it was all Cockney – and even now I struggle to identify them, so I can’t really blame Southerners for lumping Yorkshire and Lancashire into one generic northern twang. Life would be dull if we all spoke the same plummy Queen’s English – but there’s a big difference between a regional accent and lazy speech.

I have a Yorkshire accent, which I’m proud of, but it doesn’t stop me from speaking properly. And, sorry Chezza, but if I landed a highly-paid job on American television, I would certainly tone my northern accent down.

The way we speak says a lot about us. When I hear a rough, raw local accent – someone who uses ‘f’ for ‘th’, or can’t be bothered to sound a ‘t’ or ‘h’ where appropriate – it makes me cringe. It sounds lazy and thick.

Learning to speak properly is as important as learning good manners. It was drummed into me as a child. If words like “nowt” or “I aren’t” ever escaped from my mouth, I got a ticking off.

Speech is what sets us apart from animals. And let’s face it, if it wasn’t for our ability to speak, a trained chimp could be a TV talent show judge.