 Van Dyke claims that his accent coach was the English (of Irish extraction) J. Pat O'Malley, who "didn't do an accent any better than I did".In 2017, Van Dyke was selected to receive an award for television excellence from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), at which time he said "I appreciate this opportunity to apologise to the members of BAFTA for inflicting on them the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema.