One minute they're discussing the difficulty of mastering the particular accent being asked of them, the next they're playing with stuffed animals.
"He rolls his 'Rs' just right," mutters an appreciative voice behind me, the Scottish-influenced Invercargill accent being notoriously difficult to master.
In Birmingham we are used to being the butt of jokes about our city - spaghetti junction and our regional accent being two common targets.
Becoming an au pair girl for a couple involved in opera, she managed to worm her way into a Parisian drama school, her English accent being her novelty calling card.
Showing no fear of a cliche (he has his "quite yellow" teeth whitened; and anticipates his English accent being found irresistible), he heads off to the Big Apple, hoping to find a slew of ladies in the Sarah Silverman mode.
Though she speaks perfect English, the only suggestion of an accent being that of a Valley Girl, and recorded her latest disc in Los Angeles with American studio musicians, she insisted "it never occurred to me to write in English".
