they were talking about the london accent and more importantly the 'mockney' accent.
They took this bloke with a posh oxbridge accent and gave him speech lessons in london-talk.
Then they walked around a huge outdoor market to test him.
One local (lady) said he was from south of the river - another said he was from the eastend.
Anyhoo - he was asking about potatoes and onions and what not. He asked for 3 lb and on each ocassion a lb-only scale was used.
The main thing that re-inforced my views is that asking for lb's sounded totally natural to the TV item, the news broadcasters and the market folk.
not a kilo in sight.
They then broke the news to each stall holder that he was putting the voice on - to their shock.
And to prove it he asked for "three pynds orf potatoes if you please" !
Looks like TSO's also turn a healthy blind eye to the traders of the east-end!
REPLY: For some reason this extract from a recent UKMA proforma sprang to mind:
"My children learn maths and science using metric units. However I am extremely concerned that what they learn in the classroom is undermined by many things outside the school environment..."