A retired Birmingham paramedic has been chosen as the voice of the city for a smart phone app that translates Brummie into the Queen’s English.
Grandfather Alan Dugmore, from Quinton, features on the new iBrummie App, which purports to help people understand the Brummie dialect.
Mr Dugmore can be heard translate choice phrases including “Ooroyt?”,”Go and wash yer donnies” (go and wash your hands), “Come up the wuddenill” (come upstairs) and “Put yer fizzog straight” (stop sulking).
The latest version of the app, developed by Manchester digital marketing company Athernet Web Solutions, also converts common phrases into Brummie.
Athernet ran a competition to find the right voice for the app and choose Mr Dugmore for his “rich and natural” tones after a series of test recordings and interviews.
The Brummie app follows Athernet’s iWiganese App which came about after the firm hired a digital marketing manager from Wigan who no one in the office could understand.
Athernet director Ajay Kapadia said: “We had a number of applicants and it was a very close thing.
“Some people we listened to seemed to be trying too hard and in the end we felt that Alan’s is a genuine dialect that has been developed over many years.
“Alan’s first test was done over the telephone. We knew it was something special straight away.
“When the app first came out we heard a rumour that Ozzy Osbourne was going to translate it and that picked up a bit of publicity, which we could have monetised.”
Mr Dugmore, 65, has lived in Birmingham all his life and has traced his roots back to 1746 in Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire before his family moved to Birmingham in 1767.
He joined the ambulance service in 1983 and was recruited as one of Birmingham’s first paramedics in 1990.
He spent more than 20 years with the service, but when one of his legs was affected by chemotherapy after he was diagnosed with cancer, he had to retire through disability in 2004.
The grandfather of three said he was delighted when he was chosen and provided a number of extra phrases and corrected some errors.
“Some of the phrases were more Yam Yam than Brummie so I soon put them right on that,” he said.
“It’s great being involved in the iBrummie App as I’m keen on local history and something like this really brings it to life.
“They gave me about 100 sayings, a lot of them were Black Country and I had to explain that there’s a difference.
“People on the telly, they try to do a a Birmingham accent and it ends up like a bit of a Yam Yam accent and a drone that nobody’s heard of.”
The iBrummie App is available for free download on iPhone and Android phones and the phrases are also be available at iBrummie.com.
