Stephen Hawking, the wheelchair bound UK physicist and author of bestselling book 'A Brief History of Time' has announced he has changed his computer generated accent to Canadian amid fears he is wrongly seen as an American.
The news emerged after Hawking, 65, spoke at a news conference about his recent flight aboard a specially modified Boeing 747 which allowed him to experience weightlessness as if he were in space.
A simple gaffe was made during the conference when a journalist mistakenly thought he was American and referred to him as the States' premier astro-physicist. The usually mild mannered Hawking then unleashed a tirade of abuse at the reporter, most of which was bleeped-out due to a bad language censorship chip installed in his computer voice box.
Despite being an acclaimed mathematics professor at Cambridge University, a large proportion of Hawking's income comes from his regular appearances on the after dinner speech circuit. He has become aware of intensifying anti-American sentiment throughout the world and now feels being identified as an American could be bad for business.
