Strewth! Buffed-up Aussies now less vulgar than poms

The foul-mouthed tirades of Gordon Ramsay are spurring Australians to ask what was once unthinkable: are they now more prudish and less coarse than the British? And has the Australian male, once stereotypically averse to soft “poms” and “poofters”, been emasculated by political correctness?

The question of such a cultural reversal has arisen after Ramsay appeared on Australian television saying f*** 80 times in one episode of his programme Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. More than 60 viewers complained and Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, 58, raised the matter in the federal parliament. “I believe we have reached the absolute limits of acceptability,” he said.

Although the British might find it surprising, those familiar with both cultures agree that today’s Australia does not tolerate some of the vulgarity that has become commonplace in the UK.

“Have they become less coarse while the British have become more coarse? Yes, in short,” said the author Phillip Knightley, who grew up in Australia but has long lived in London. “You’d never get away with using f*** in public in Australia. It appears only very occasionally in newspapers. And women object to it - whereas here in Britain I notice it is used as often by women as men.”

Knightley also believes that Britain now outdoes Australia in binge drinking by women: "There is binge drinking in Australia, but it’s men. Women get boisterous, but not rolling drunk.”

Last week Rob Darroch, the Australian journalist and blogger, published an entry bemoaning the death of the traditional Australian “bloke”. He opined: “He is gone, or almost gone, the way of the dodo ... the victim of politically correct social engineering. This new guy - called the metrosexual - has become the standard model, the new archetype of the male of our antipodean species.”