You'll forgive me mate, but I cannot for the life of me understand a word of it.

I don't know if it's my gear or me, though I suspect the latter. I have a pretty typical high-frequency hearing loss from gunfire (and probably racing cars didn't help) so some accents I can't make hide nor hair of unless I can lip-read.

American Southern accents are especially problematic as consonants are so softened as to make the speaker unintelligible. My wife is softspoken with a lovely Virginia accent that can drive me mad; much further south and it's so much mumbling mush.