It’s as Australian as kangaroos and eucalyptus, but Pom, the national — and often endearing — term for the British has become too much to bear for some.

A group of British expatriates living in Australia has launched a legal action to outlaw the use of the word in advertising on the basis that Pom is a derogatory term, on a par with “nigger” and “wog”.

British People Against Racial Discrimination (BPARD) has launched the action with Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau in an attempt to take off air a television beer advertisement that features an Englishman fearful of Australia’s cold. Cold beer, that is.

The advertisement claims that the brewer Tooheys’ new Supercold brand is “cold enough to scare a Pom” and features footage of an overweight, pale, balding man in a Union Jack T-shirt cringing in fear at the offer of a cold beer.

BPARD, which is run by a committee of 14 and claims to have branches in Perth and Melbourne, said yesterday through its spokesman, David Thomason: “The Oxford Dictionary classes Pom as being derogatory, just like wog, wop, dink, dago, coon and abo.”

Mr Thomason believes that there is a fashionable wave of derogatory insults against the British and, on the eve of the second Ashes Test, cited the behaviour of Australian cricket fans toward the English.

“The songs the Aussie supporters sing talk about how we can’t get near your body because of your smell, your body odour, your bad breath, your buck teeth, your whingeing, have you got some soap,” he said.

“The worst you hear from the Barmy Army is that Aussies are sheep shaggers and you all live in a penal colony.”

Asked by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) whether being called a sheep shagger was worse than been accused of having poor personal hygiene, Mr Thomason said that it was not. “Not really, because sheep shagging, that’s generalising. Bad personal hygiene, that’s sort of a personal attack,” he said.

Based on legal precedent, it is unlikely that Pom will be wiped from the Australian public lexicon. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has considered twice whether the word is derogatory and ruled it safe on both occasions.

In its latest ruling, issued in September, the commission sanctioned the continued use of the word, provided that it was not accompanied by other offensive comments that were racist or unlawful.

Cricket Australia welcomed the ruling but announced that during this year’s Ashes series it would outlaw racially based taunts from the crowd. Warning signs have been erected at venues and placed on tickets, and fans who transgress face eviction from the ground.

ABC, the government-owned national broadcaster, has also reviewed its attitude recently toward the use of the word Pom.

Heather Forbes, the chairman of the corporation’s standing committee on spoken English, said yesterday that the committee had decided that the use of the word was acceptable.

“I think it can be used as a term of endearment, you know, ‘Here come the Poms’. Everybody is looking forward to the British cricket team playing here and the Ashes series.

I think it’s quite acceptable,” she said.

Trading insults:

Aussie jokes about Poms

Q Where do Poms hide their cash?

A Under the soap

Q Why do you take a cowpat to a Pom wedding?

A To keep the flies away from the bride.

Q What do you call a Pom cricketer with a 100 next to his name?

A A bowler

Q What do you call a Pom with two wooden legs?

A A waste of good wood

Q Why do Poms take only a half hour for lunch?

A Any longer, they would need retraining

British retort

Q What’s gross ignorance?

A 144 Aussies

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