Boy goes up in life while under the knife

LONDON - A 10-year-old boy has woken up with a posh English accent after undergoing life-saving brain surgery.

William McCartney-Moore's usual northern England accent was replaced with much more refined tones complete with elongated vowels after his operation to remove fluid on his brain.

William, from York, needed the surgery after falling ill with a rare strain of meningitis last March. "He went in with a York accent and he came out all posh," his mother Ruth McCartney-Moore told the York Press newspaper.

Doctors said changes to accents after surgery were rare. The central speech centre of William's brain could have changed.

- AAP