“Alwight, ’ere’s me plan. I’ll start nice and adagio wiv sum glissade and a bit of plié. I’ll frow in a grand jeté if you wanna see it. Luvverly jubbly. Then I’ll do a fouetté en tournant. I fink it will be a well wicked ending, innit.”

There are apparently far too few actors who speak Received Pronunciation; their vowels have been corrupted by Estuary English or regional twangs. The BBC – the home of RP since 1922, when Lord Reith ruled that it should be the standard for his broadcasters – is holding an open casting session tomorrow for a TV adaptation of Ballet Shoes, the classic children’s novel. The producers claim that thus far they have been unable to find leads who can cut both a dancing dash and glass.

Middle-class children it seems have deserted the crisp tones of Cholmondeley-Warner. Shouldn’t summat (sorry, something) be done? Elocution lessons, perhaps? It is difficult to imagine Henry Higgins descending on schools to teach children to declaim: “In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.” Anyhow, that statement is probably untrue now.

For decades, working-class communities have been bothered by earnest dialectologists, armed with tape recorders, trying to capture the burr of Somerset’s last cider-scruncher, or the sea-sprayed cadences of ancient herringmen from Northumberland. For the sake of posterity, the same must be done for the last RP-speakers. A British Library Sound Archive recording entitled Middle-Class Dinner Party Discussion of House Prices, Fulham c 2007 – Prime Example of RP would remind future generations of what has been lost, or maybe just provide them with an opportunity to say: “Didn’t they speak funny?”