This is the latest episode of Not a Phase, a weekly video series where Jezebel remembers some of the most delightfully cringeworthy phases of a celebrity’s life, even though they would probably like us to forget. Madonna was born in Bay City, Michigan, but you’d think she was born in Poshington Posh Posh, United Kingdom, given the way she’s spoken over the years. I’m referring to, of course, of Madonna’s famously fake English accent that comes and goes whenever she pleases and reached its peak ridiculousness in the 2000s. Madonna aficionados have come up with myriad excuses for why she talked like that, ranging from her jet-setter lifestyle to amateur diagnoses of foreign accent syndrome. One of her reps even said Madonna simply has an uncanny ability to adapt accents through sheer osmosis. But in the video above, I make the case that Madonna was likely just an Anglophile who got lost in the HP Sauce.
