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.

This weekend Kevin Rudd, the new Labor prime minister, is visiting Britain and will also speak for a squeaky clean new Australia, keen to escape its past.

In his first 100 days in office, Rudd has ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change - a measure long resisted by his predecessor - and issued a formal apology to indigenous Australians for the “theft” by white Australians of a “generation” of Aboriginal children. He will present an image of a country that has moved far beyond the rowdy, irreverent tradition of larrikins, Crocodile Dundee and such terms as “she’ll be right”, “goodonyamate” and “budgie smuggler” (Aussie slang for a swimming costume).

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.” Even Barry Humphries, the comedian who created Sir Les Patterson, the notoriously crude Australian cultural attaché, suspects there has been a reversal.

“Australian politicians thought they had the franchise on bad language,” he said, referring to Ramsay’s notoriety. “I think it’s annoying some people in high places that a pom is coming in trying to upstage them. And over their tucker, too.

“Les would have a comment, wouldn’t he? ‘There are far too many mealy-mouthed poofters in high places in Australia now. It’s a bit of a pooft-ocracy these days.

“Les would say the average Australian hornbag [crude slang for an attractive woman] likes a bit of language. It’s a turn-on for them.”

Humphries, who was invited to a Downing Street function during Rudd’s visit, added that Sir Les regarded Rudd as “a clean-cut sort of fellow. Les calls him ‘the Dentist’. He looks just like a dentist, peering critically into the mouth of the nation, saying, ‘Who did this work?’

“Les has been guiding him a little bit on protocol. The main thing is to make sure his flies are done up when he meets the Queen.”

While Humphries’s creation still plays well in the UK, the modern Australian male is a million miles from the “cobber” caricature. Role models include Michael Clarke, the Australian cricketer who sports a diamond stud in his ear (unheard of a decade ago) and shops in Prada.

“Fifteen years ago an Australian cricketer wouldn’t be seen in Prada,” observed Hamish Fitzsimmons, an ABC radio producer in Sydney. “They couldn’t spell the word.”

Ian Thorpe, the retired swimming star, is routinely paraded by the media as the ideal young Australian male: he epitomises the buffed, muscular body, earnest green convictions, worthy charitable interests and personal hygiene. It all speaks to a generation of Australian men for whom a pedicure and professional hair styling are routine.

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.”

Andrew Bolt, one of the fiercest right-wing columnists in Australia, is dismayed by the trends.

“We used to look to England for real examples of politically correct nuttiness - such as what Islington council did – and we’d laugh about it,” he said. “We now only have to look at ourselves. We don’t quite have Ken Livingstone. But [the southern state of] Victoria is just like your Liverpool council was.

“Britain is rescued by the long history of the eccentric - a Martin Amis or a Boris Johnson - we don’t have that.”

The prudish bossiness that has crept over Australia in the past decade is “a fog that is smothering us”, he claimed, and “a lot of Australians are quite upset by all this hectoring and badgering” from what he sees as a left-wing elite.

That elite is reflected in Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in two weeks’ time that will debate the country’s future. A thousand hand-picked delegates – billed as “the best and brightest” but in reality those most acceptable to Labor – will determine the ideas, agenda and policy platform that will affect 20m Australians.

To some, though, reports of the death of the Aussie bloke have been exaggerated. Last week they pointed to the example of Norm Moreen, from the Northern Territory. When his wife was seized by a crocodile in a river, Moreen leapt on the reptile and poked at its eyes until it let her go.

Goodonyamate.

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