A leather moment my father taught me

My father was a fantastic Dutch speaker of English. We can all 'leather' from him. The thing is, where students very often seem to suffer from blind panic or disinterest whenever they write things like 'leather moment' when they mean something else, my father always seemed totally in control and pretended he knew what he was saying. He sounded more British than the queen herself when he spoke English. He never really learned it in school so he didn't have much to go on. But he made something of it.
 His trick was that he simply kept repeating: "Oh, rather?!" with exactly the right intonation and aristocratic face. He acted the part of an English speaker even though these were the only words in his repertoire. He listened to my friends British uncle tell him something when we were at a campsite in France and all he did was nod and pull a "I know it all"-face. Every now and then he let drop his: "Oh, rather?!"
That's it! That's all it takes to get it right. Just pretend and pull a face! I am finding it helps a lot to think about what someone's mouth looks like when you try to imitate their accent. My father did this too. He probably thought all Brits deep down always pretended they were aristocrats. And he believed in himself. He knew he could even be famous, although not in Ireland. When he was in Dublin to visit me, he apparently walked around as if he was a local because someone asked him directions. He couldn't help them so he graciously said: "I am not well known here".