I've lived near Birmingham all my life, but I woke up with a Geordie accent

A BRUMMIE woke up to a blinding headache – with a Geordie accent.

Migraine sufferer Verity Went, 26, is stunned by the change, having only visited the North East once when she was 13.

She explained: 'I had been awake for a few hours and saw my vision disappearing and knew I was going to get a migraine. It was probably one of the worst I've had.

“When I woke up my speech was quite slurred but I'm used to it when I get paralyzed and when it came back it went straight to a Geordie accent.

“My mother works at a doctor's office and I sent her a message saying, 'I sound different.'

“I immediately got in and looked at my mother to start talking and felt so embarrassed.

“When I started talking, the doctor's eyes and mouth were wide open. She really couldn't believe it.”

Verity grew up and lived all her life near Birmingham – the setting for the BBC series Peaky Blinders – and a caravan holiday in her youth was her only introduction to the North East.

She has a functional neurological disorder and thinks this and the migraines may have changed the part of her brain that affects speech.

She is about to visit a neurologist and suspects she has foreign accent syndrome, a condition that changes the way you talk.

But Verity of Penkridge, Staffs, admitted: “I have now completely accepted this accent.”

2