Is it because Stuart Maconie is a professional Northerner?

Or is it the BBC’s insidious anti-London bias? Whatever the reason,”The People’s Songs”, Radio 2’s otherwise excellent series, which finished last night, has had a distinct lack of Southern accents. The series documents post-war British history with popular songs and the attendant memories of ordinary Britons. Considering London and the South East has the UK’s biggest population density and has made the greatest contribution to popular music, its people have been shamefully under-represented. There was a token episode about “Swinging London” but more typically it was people from the regions droning on about The Smiths or the Wigan Casino. It’s as though a regional accent somehow makes a story more “real”. Yet there are few things more “real” than the London depicted in this bleak but beautiful “People’s Song”.