The illness I have is catastrophic. My nose is running like a fireman’s hose, my head is full of what feels like molten lava, I have a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit and I know that if Norris McWhirter were to come round, he’d verify that no human being has ever been this sick and survived.

“I have ebola,” I said to my wife yesterday. “No. You have a cold,” she replied in the icy way women have when they don’t realise just how ill a man is.

There was nothing on God’s good earth that would have caused me to get out of bed yesterday morning. Nothing, that is, except a rugby World Cup final between England and Australia.

Beating the Australians at rugby would be like beating the Americans at space shuttle baseball or the Russians at ice bear skating. Beating them would be the single most deliriously joyful thing ever to have been beamed out of my box.

The Australians go to work in shorts and that’s a good enough reason to hate them. Also, they have cookers in their kitchens but choose to cook their prawns in the garden. And the only invention to have come out of Australia, ever, is the rotary washing line.

If it had been England versus someone else, I’d have been under the duvet but us versus the Aussies — with a very real chance that we could rub their noses in the mud — I had to be up for that.

And wasn’t it just the most exciting sporting event you’ve ever seen? A draw at full time in any game of rugby is rare but in a World Cup final it looked like the match had been scripted by the great screen-writer William Goldman himself. Then when the man the Aussies hate more than Satan himself kicked the winning goal seconds from the end of extra time, it really was the perfect ending.

Except for one small thing. Normally, when a game finishes, you want to see the joy etched on the faces of the winners. So that’s what we got. Lots of shots of Martin Johnson and Clive Woodward beaming. But actually what I wanted were big, fat juicy close-ups of Australians in the crowd. I wanted to see their disappointment in all its 16:9 digital high-definition glory.

I’m ashamed to say that when the medals had been handed out and we cut to the 340th ad break, I actually overcame the Marburg virus momentarily and rang a couple of random numbers from the Sydney phone book. Just to laugh.

Because let’s be honest. If the Aussies can’t even win a game of rugby, what are they good at? Think about it. A little over 200 years ago, the people of the civilised world were presented with Australia and America, two new continents to develop as they saw fit.

Unlike Australia, the natives of America did not spend all day painting zig-zags on cave walls. They had bows and arrows and went about their business with your father’s ears on a necklace.

Still, in just a couple of centuries, the Americans have brought life and neon to the desert, built New York out of the swamp and emerged as the most powerful nation the world has ever seen.

Meanwhile, the Australians were given what they call God’s own country. A land of plenty. A land of gold and magnesium and sheep.

But what have the Australians ever done? What is the name of their prime minister? How much is an Aussie dollar worth? Name five films that they’ve made. Now go round your house and try to find something that was made there. Your computer? Your car? Your trousers? When someone has outgrown their home country, they move to America to become even more successful. Jamie Oliver, Simon Cowell and Graham Norton are following in the footsteps of Anne Robinson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Whereas you never hear anyone say, “Well I’m totally happy. I have lots of friends, an enjoyable career and a great family. So I’m moving to Australia.” No one has ever gone there because of the success they’ve made of themselves somewhere else.

Michael Barrymore, for instance, is on the verge of moving down under. And do you remember Lord Lundy from the Hilaire Belloc poem? Having started out as the minister for war, he moved downwards to become the curator of Big Ben, much to the annoyance of his father:

We had intended you to be
the next prime minister but three
The stocks were sold; the press was squared
The middle class was quite prepared
But as it is! . . . My language fails!
Go out and govern New South Wales.

As a nation of losers, then, this weekend’s result should have been no more of a surprise for Australia than the victory was for us English.