I've never actually been to the USA, and Alice Bachini clears up something for me about the USA that has always puzzled me.

Here is what Alice says about that rude guy on the telly who denounces aspiring pop singers, and makes them cry. He is now big in the America, apparently, but they think he's an American.

… The difference between the UK and the US is, if you're famous in America people will assume you are American, even if the way you speak says otherwise. They'll just make up an obvious explanation. An English accent is not English, it's just a disdainful and rude version of American. …

Alice goes on to say that this means she is sunk, but that is not what concerns me, what with me not being Alice and what with me being an uncaring swine. No, what concerns me is the way that obviously English people occasionally show up in American movies, apparently playing Americans. They have American parents, and went to American schools. Yet they turned out English. And Americans don't seem to have any objections to this bizarre arrangement, because they are the ones making and watching these movies. Now all is clear. Americans think that these English people are Americans, but disdainful and rude.

Mind you, when I first encountered an American who talked the way Lloyd Grossman talks, I thought he was taking the piss out of my accent. (This was long before Lloyd Grossman himself had occurred.) Since he was doing this in England, this struck me as a very odd thing for him to do. But it turned out he was an American, from somewhere near Boston, i.e. from the exact same place as Lloyd Grossman. Then when Lloyd Grossman started babbling away on the telly, I said: hah! I know that weird voice. I've heard that before.