Shine ya Shoes Guv?

I was on TV a couple of weeks ago, but strangely I haven't really told anyone about it. I always thought that if I was on TV for some reason I'd tell anyone that would listen, but then I was on Richard & Judy, a show beaten in the ratings by Swiss Railway Adventures and with all the production quality of your average YouTube video. I'd been stopped in Milton Keynes shopping centre and was asked a question regarding the origins of St Valentines' Day, but my small screen debut made me realise why actors don't watch their performances back.

In short, I sounded a right slack-jawed yokel with all the eloquence of your average builder. But then I am from Northamptonshire with London-born parents, so an unflattering accent is somewhat to be expected. What concerned me was how this may adversely affect my quest for a job in the media. I may be articulate enough to convey the linguistic skills of an Oxford professor in print (ahem), but in reality I'm a right country-Cockney half-breed.

We're always told how first impressions count, how people make up their mind about you in the first minutes of meeting you, and how these impressions take a lifetime to break - so when it comes to interviewing is my native tongue an obstacle from the start?

A month or so ago I had an interview for an internship with Money Magpie, the financial advice website. On entering their offices, I was preceded by a smart-looking chap in a very stylish grey coat, designer glasses - he looked like a Specsavers model. I shook it off and told myself that no matter how expensive his coat was it was irrelevant in whether he was the best candidate, but is it? When greeted with the two of us; him in his nice coat with his middle-England accent, followed by me in my Topman jacket and rhyming slang do I lose the battle before its even begun? The interviewer looked positively uninterested from the off. This could have been just the way she interviews or perhaps she'd already decided a common sort just wasn't right for such a classy establishment.

I'm under no illusions, it was my first interview and I'm in no doubt I wasn't the best candidate on the day. I have limited genuine experience with little in the way of published work, but if it came down to the wire between me and another candidate, with little to choose from between the two of us, I fear I will lose out to the posh guy in the Armani coat every time.