I love folks who claim to be able to "do a British accent." Generally, they either adopt a posh accent or a lame cockney one. Some bust out a Ringo Starr circa 1963. As my linguistics professor pointed out to me so long ago, years ago, Londoners could peg what block in one lived on by the way one pronounced certain words. There are dozens of accents in the UK. And this kids pretty much nails them. In this little YouTube piece, he takes on 24 accents, about half of which are from the isles -- from different English ones (ranked by class, etc.) to Welch to Scottish.
I also recommend reading the comments about this on HuffPo. Very interesting theory put forward, claiming that it is exactly because Brits are exposed to so many accents, nearly from birth, that they are so good at imitations. I like the idea, but I'm not sure about it. Yes, they have Tilda Swinton, but the US have Meryl Streep, and nearly every Aussie actor I can think of can do a passable American. But the proportions do seem to be out of whack ... it seems like per capita, the UK wins the prize in this department. How many times have you heard an actor speaking in his or her own voice and said, "I had no idea they were British!"
