We’ve all heard of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but imagine waking up on the wrong side of the country.

That is what it felt like for an amateur actor who feel asleep with a south London accent – and claims he woke up talking like he was from the West Country.

Joe Webster, of Birdhurst Avenue, South Croydon, had been practising the voice for a part in an upcoming play in which he adopts the role of Dorset drug dealer who sells cannabis with his mum.

The 33-year-old said he was listening to a recording of his lines before bed on Sunday, May 8 – and woke up unable to shake off the accent.

Watch a video on Mr Webster's new accent compared to a promo spoken in his London accent below.

He said: “We started rehearsing for this play back in February and I always run my lines through in a recording.

“I started listening to it at night on my phone, I wasn’t listening to it every night, but sometimes I would fall asleep listening to it.

“Then on Monday morning I got up, had a shower, went to work and when I spoke to the receptionist I spoke like this.

“Then I spoke to someone else and the same thing happened. I tried to make a joke out of it but on the inside I was thinking ‘what’s going on, I am not trying to do this’.”

He added: “I really should have seen some warning signs before because I started jokingly – at least I thought it was jokingly – talking like I am talking now.

“But looking back now I think maybe that was when it was starting.”

A cynic might suspect Mr Webster was on the wind-up, or pulling a stunt to promote his play.

But he would not be the first person to wake up and discover he no longer speaks with his own accent.

A handful of people in the UK have been recorded as being suffering from a rare medical condition known as "foreign accent syndrome," although it is usually triggered by a stroke or a head injury.

This is also not the first time Mr Webster, who grew up in Tonbridge, claims to have unexpectedly developed a new accent.

When he moved to Croydon 14 years ago he worked in a pub staffed by Australians and picked up an Antipodean twang.

He said customers believed he was an Aussie and he had to explain he was a Londoner.

Mr Webster, who works as a digital display strategist, said although his friends had found his latest predicament amusing he could not see the funny side himself.

He added: “It’s been the out-of-control part of it that has freaked me out a little bit, before I could just put [the accent] on and then get into a rhythm of talking like this.

“I thought my friends would have a little bit of sympathy but they all think it is hilarious.

“Over the last few days I think they have all started to feel a bit sorry for me though.

“Now I am finding it funny because I have spoken to my friends about it and I can see that it is starting to tone down.”

Pot Luck, the play in which Mr Webster’s will put to use his new accent, will open at the Spreadeagle on June 1.

Is Mr Webster’s Dorset accent genuine or is he putting it on? Watch the video above and let us know what you think.