My Australian friend Al was driving his five-year-old daughter to school. A car pulled out in front of them, but Al for once confined himself to a bitter exhalation. Beside him, Ginny asked brightly: “Is that another dickhead, Daddy?”

Australian speech is lively, demotic, unstuffy: the talk of men with calloused hands and a serious problem with authority. The basic structure of discourse implies a vital truth: if you think you’re better than me, you can f*** off.

The fundamental egalitarianism of Australia has always found an expression in the unconstrained use of taboo words. Strewth and bloody are antique commonplaces of Australian life, and “hello you bastard” remains an ancient and affectionate greeting between old-timers.

Australia has always, however, had a seam of prim respectability running alongside its man o’ the people stuff: that is why Australians could never bear Dame Edna Everage, the incarnation of nice-minded Australian suburbia.

The absurdity of an Australian drawing back the hem of his garments when a foreigner uses naughty words is lost on the prim part of Australia. And yet the sporting year has already been enlivened by yet another international incident involving Australian cricketers swearing at their opponents. The Australians invented sledging, the art of distracting opponents by means of coarse abuse, and yet they threw a faint when it was thrown back at them by a member of the Indian team. Perhaps the problem here is that Australia needs to adjust its national threshold of irony.

Merv Hughes, an Australian fast bowler, was bowling at the West Indian captain, Viv Richards, on his home island of Antigua, and giving him a series of histrionic glares. Eventually Richards said: “This is my island, my culture. Don’t you be staring at me. In my culture, we just bowl.” Hughes then got Richards out, and told him: “In my culture, we just say f*** off.”

Times Recommends

• Exit Clinton. But what a show next!
• Angel of the South: the wrong horse
• Cannabis: who cares if it's B or C?