Andy Richardson: You can laugh, but I'm proud of who I Yam

Or are you asking patronising questions about whether we drink milk on the doorstep or season our fish and chips with coal dust?

The Black Country has the baddest of bad reps. We are mocked by the rest of the country, derided by the insecure and laughed at by the (un)intelligensia, who incorrectly assume a link between birthplace and IQ. There isn't. Nor is there a connection between intellect, integrity, honesty, reliability or work conduct and spaykin' proppa.

There are countless working class heroes who prove that those who judge us for the way we speak are only making fools of themselves.

Peter Larcombe – or Professor Villa, as he is known to his students – is one of my favourites. The Black Country-born University of Derby professor recently featured in the Times Education Supplement and said something like this: "I'm a professor with a working-class accent – get over it."

He found people were frequently taken aback when they found out what he did for a living, wrongly assuming he worked on the bins, fathered 27 children to claim extra benefits or trained ponies for weekend trap races.

They compounded their wrong-headed assumption by cheerfully offering 'but you don't sound like a professor' – a condescending response straight from the Boris Johnson school of diplomacy that is the verbal equivalent of telling a vegan 'don't worry, I've bought you some cheese'.

Identifying the distinctive inflections, rhythms, intonations and delivery of speech, Peter noted Yam Yams and Brummies had one thing in common: "Both shades of accent – through portrayal on television and radio – have all too often suffered the ignominy of being a marker of dim-wittedness. Funny? No. Accurate? Do me a favour. Have they been used to underpin a false stereotype? Yes, sadly, and it all smacks of media laziness and convenience.

"I make no apology whatsoever for having my accent – I'm rightly proud of it, to be honest – and I resent anyone using it as the basis for an immediate judgement to be made about me."

Don't you just love it when a maths professor articulates with such clarity.

On the subject of those with perfectly polished speech, he added: "Some of them are actually not even that bright academically once you get past the glossy sheen of well-polished externality, spearheaded by proverbial (and dire) Queen's English. It acts as a protective shield, deliberate or otherwise – and unfortunately does a pretty good job for the most part.

"I'll never lose my accent or suffer the shame of deliberately watering it down based on a vague notion of public conformity or sense of embarrassment imposed on me for all the wrong reasons."

Peter is rightly proud of the way he speaks and recoils in horror at the alternative: a bland Nowheresville accent with plummy middle-class tones. He may work in an intellectually elite subject but he isn't the only bright star in the firmament.

Lenny Henry – Sir – was recently appointed Chancellor of Birmingham City University, having left school with barely a qualification. As a young comic, he began his road to academic improvement. While performing two shows a night in Blackpool, he studied for O Levels then read Yeats, Tennyson and Shakespeare and hung out in the British Library. He's now coming towards the end of his doctorate on race, class and gender in film at Royal Holloway, University of London. It's impressive work from a man who fits more into a day than most do into a lifetime.

Meera Syal is another. The CBE recipient, star of Goodness Gracious Me and writer of Bhaji on the Beach and the beautiful House of Hidden Mothers is the acme of Black Country academia. Personable and charming, witty and creative, she's a polymathic, polyhistor whose retention of her Wolverhampton accent helps define her. She is so damn smart that the book she wrote to make sense of her formative years, the elegant Anita and Me, now itself features on school and university syllabuses. Her work has been studied by numerous scholars – which kinda knocks the prejudiced idea that Yam Yam = Thick Thick into a crooked hat.

Most IQ tests have around seven classifications. And though I speak like the unfortunate offspring of Noddy Holder and Frank Skinner, I am ever-present in the top group. I was beaten at school only once – and my best friend doctor scored a triple first at Cambridge, so I don't mind.

So when people laugh at me or make rubbish jokes because of my accent, I laugh right back. Because their laughter doesn't tell me anything I don't already know about myself. But it does tell me everything I ever need to know about them.