Having lived in, and gone to school in, many counties starting with Yorkshire and ending with Kent via Bristol, Surrey and Hertfordshire, I have picked up many ways of pronouncing things and have come to the conclusion that you have to say things as you say them and not necessarily as the local residents do. I find it odd that there is now an effort for newsreaders, in particular, to sport a local pronunciation for a place name when they would otherwise say it in their own style.
For instance great play seems to be made for non Geordies to pronounce Newcastle with a hard 'a' as in 'ass' but if they haven't pronounced it this way before it always sounds wrong to me. It's a bit like advocating that we all call Paris 'Paree' now, after all that is the way all French folk pronounce it. Same goes for Bath: the locals pronounce it with a very wide 'a' and rolling 'r' and to suggest it should be hard short 'a' would sound wrong to me. Each to his own with no singular way I think.
