Mrs Doubtfire is one of the most hilarious and loved comedy-drama movies of the 1990s, but many of us Edinburgh locals have long been puzzled by where exactly in Scotland Robin Williams' fun-loving nanny was supposed to be from.
And if it wasn't for the late great Williams revealing Mrs Doubtfire's precise origins in an unearthed interview from almost 30 years ago, we'd probably be asking that question forevermore.
Throughout the 1993 movie, Mrs Doubtfire clearly speaks with a cod Caledonian twang, yet in one scene she claims she's from England - which must surely rank as one of the greatest insults to the Scottish accent in Hollywood history.
READ MORE: The real-life Edinburgh 'Mrs Doubtfire' who inspired the Robin Williams blockbuster
American indifference/ignorance aside, however, most Scots would probably say Mrs Doubtfire's dialect (which was a bit dodgy, let's be brutally honest) was an approximation of a well-to-do lady from the east coast.
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It is, after all, fairly well-known that Anne Fine, the author of the 1987 novel that inspired Mrs Doubtfire, named her character after a real-life Edinburgh shopkeeper.
The 'real' Mrs Doubtfire
Madame Doubtfire was a moniker familiar to many in Edinburgh's New Town in the 1970s, as it was the name above the door to the premises of Annabella Coutts, whose second hand goods emporium became the stuff of legend.
Coutts, who was said to have been fiery-tempered and foul-mouthed - nothing like the Mrs Doubtfire character - named her South East Circus Place bric-a-brac store after her first husband, Arthur Cyril Doubtfire, who was killed in action during the First World War.
Edinburgh or Glasgow?
None of this background information appears to have influenced Robin Williams, however. His decision to give Mrs Doubtfire a Scottish accent was very much one of chance.
In a television interview, Williams, who was famous for his incredible ability to mimic voices, reveals that his Mrs Doubtfire was not from Edinburgh at all - she was actually a posh Glaswegian.
During an appearance on ITV's Des O'Connor Show, first broadcast on February 2, 1994, Robin Williams tells Des that he was inspired by the accent of legendary Glasgow-born film director Bill Forsyth, with whom he had recently worked with on the movie Being Human.
"Where is [the accent] exactly?" asks Des on the show. Slipping back into Doubtfire dialect, the actor, who tragically died in 2014, replies: "It's like a Glaswegian accent, because I'd just finished working with Bill Forsyth for four months."
As well as basing elements of Mrs Doubtfire's voice on the Local Hero and Gregory's Girl director, Williams said her softer side was heavily influenced by a member of the Being Human production team, a costume designer called "Merritt".
In the hilarious clip, Williams adds: "I slowly but surely, took a little bit of Bill Forsyth, and a little bit of this costume designer - this wonderful, sweet lady named Merritt - and combined them, and got this gentle, gentle voice of Mrs Doubtfire, who could still say: [yelling] 'Get away!'."
So, there you have it, according to the man behind the voice, Mrs Doubtfire was less of a Morningside matron, more of a Kelvinside quine.
