Sir Patrick Stewart Demonstrates How Cows Moo in Different English Accents

Hav­ing spent the fall loung­ing in the bath dressed as a lob­ster, and gam­bol­ing around New York City with Wait­ing for Godot cast mate Ian McK­ellen, the irre­press­ible Patrick Stew­art brought 2013 to a close by indulging a curi­ous fan of NPR’s How To Do Every­thing pod­cast.

Her ques­tion? What do Eng­lish cows sound like when they moo.

The knight­ed star does not skimp on his answer, even if, as he repeat­ed­ly sug­gests, one can­not do the sub­ject jus­tice in less than an entire after­noon. The dialects of British cows, like those of their human coun­ter­parts, under­score that theirs is a soci­ety “dom­i­nat­ed by class, social sta­tus and loca­tion.”

The moo of a cow from West Oxford­shire, home to Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron, is quite con­ser­v­a­tive com­pared to the lusty bel­low of a spec­i­men from West York­shire, where Stew­art grew up. (The lat­ter is so aston­ish­ing, he imme­di­ate­ly offers to pro­duce it twice.)

Cock­ney cows, a breed whose ranks have thinned con­sid­er­ably since Shake­speare’s day, sound like sheep.

May­fair cows sound like for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Sir Alec Dou­glas-Home.

As an extra treat, Stew­art gen­er­ous­ly agrees to the host’s request for an Amer­i­can cow, imper­son­at­ing a Neva­da-dweller, a geo­graph­ic homage to the orig­i­nal ques­tion­er as well as his bride, jazz singer Sun­ny Ozell.

Is there any­thing this man can’t — or won’t — do?

via Laugh­ing Squid

Ayun Hal­l­i­day wish­es her favorite play­wright a very hap­py birth­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

Acclaimed BBC Pro­duc­tion of Ham­let, Star­ring David Ten­nant (Doc­tor Who) and Patrick Stew­art (Star Trek)