When I tell people that I'm an accent reduction and public speaking coach, their first question is nearly always,

'What sort of people do you coach?'

Over 12 years of doing this, I've worked with hundreds of people; mostly individuals, some in groups.

And I've fielded enquiries from hundreds more who were curious about changing their accents or polishing their speaking skills, but who didn't go on to book a course with me (my door's always open, friends).

Several patterns have emerged - sure, everyone is different, but actually there a few types of people that I meet again and again.

Do any of these sound like you? Or someone you know?

Billy Connolly has probably the most famous Scottish accent is the world (ask your parents, Gen Z) and it's not the mildest accent, by any means. And he was still a global success. Do you have to tone down your accent to get ahead?

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you're a mid-career professional, exploring ways to improve your public speaking or reduce your accent, and you've been thinking about this for a while. You've likely come across many coaching options. How do you decide who to trust with something as personal and impactful as your voice?

In the latest season of The Traitors UK, Charlotte - from London has employed a unique strategy to gain trust: faking a Welsh accent. Why?

Looking in detail at the differences between one speaker and another, with broadly the same accent, reminded me that although RP is its own distinctive accent, it's tempting to observe that no two British English RP speakers sound the same!

Unconfident speakers, especially those nervous about public speaking in front of even a small audience, often focus heavily on their content to avoid addressing their delivery. This common public speaking challenge highlights the importance of balancing engaging content with confident presentation skills.

A few listeners might notice your impressive vocabulary or spotless grammar. What they remember, though, is when you spent the whole presentation talking about 'copyright' and pronouncing it 'corporate'.

Chris Packham is a professional communicator with decades of experience of speaking on and off camera. The bar is high.

But I'm especially fascinated by the speech as an example of all the things I encourage speakers to do, when I talk about 'doing the listeners' work'.

The highlight of your presentation is not your slides. It’s not even your content. The highlight is YOU

Using tongue twisters to gauge whether someone is too drunk to drive is just another way of telling us what we already know: people judge our competence based on how easy it is to understand us

This week I was featured in an article in the Daily Telegraph, one of the UK's main national newspapers, to talk about politicians' voices, and whether it’s possible to tell if they’ve had public speaking coaching.

Working with voiceover artists, I’ve learned that ‘authenticity’ is everything: it’s the same for people I see one-to-one for accent reduction and confident speaking