Britain is agog that Ben Elton is trading in his bowler hat for budgie smugglers. But if he thinks moving Down Under will mean embracing the Crocodile Dundee lifestyle, he may be in for a shock. Over the 20 years I've lived in London, the English have become yobs and the Australians, snobs.
Gordon Ramsay's sexist comments about Tracy Grimshaw in which he compared her to a wrinkly, ugly old pig, set off the prime ministerial smoke alarm. Kevin Rudd called Ramsay a "new form of low life". Tempers boiled over like milk. The indignant consensus was that people just don't behave so crassly in the colonies. Not only did Ramsay have to eat something he had never tasted before - his own words (a case of sado-mastication?) but it illuminated a change in our cultural identities.
When I moved to England in 1988, Aussies were considered the Irish of the Pacific, a recessive gene. The person between two Australians was called an interpreter. An Australian in a suit - a defendant. It was presumed our main topic of conversation was how long we had to go on our parole.
The English, on the other hand, were a tea-drinking, highbrow-plucking bunch of Conan the Grammarians with impeccable manners. If I trod on someone on the Tube, they apologised to me. Even though Englishmen didn't seem able to drive past a perversion without pulling over, a woman was considered an exhibitionist for wearing open-toed sandals.
In the intervening years, it's as though our two nations have undergone a personality transplant. English husbands and wives no longer separate after dinner. No, they separate at the end of the evening to go to their respective lovers. Gone is the put-up-and-shut-up stoicism of previous generations. Britain has the highest divorce rate in Europe, coupled with the highest teenage pregnancy statistics. Since Diana they've also started hemorrhaging emotion.
Twenty years ago it took open-heart surgery to discover what went on inside an Englishman. English voices were so brittle they could qualify for osteoporosis pills. Silence was the only art of conversation on the London Underground. Their doormats read, "Welcome. Now Go Away." They never did anything spontaneous without a warning.
Not any more. Witness the outpourings of grief for the death of a Big Brother star, a gauche girl named Jade. People who once sported stiff-upper-lip facial expressions by taxidermy now cry buckets over X Factor contestants.
They used to be poetry-quoting brainiacs. (Been there, Donne that.) But their current No. 1 cultural icon is Jordan, a topless ''novelist'' who can write without moving her lips, but not without her ghost writer.
When I first lived in London, I remember having conversations which were so highbrow it made my ears pop. Yet, today's newspapers constantly complain that English children leave school unable to read and write. Once it was Australians who were considered the illiterati. It was presumed that our only smarts involved Croc-Dundee outback ingenuity. In fact, most Australians are city dwellers. Yes, we can make a fire by rubbing together two sticks - but only if one of them is a match. In fact, Australians read more books per head of population and attend more cultural events than the people of any other nation.
The other proof of English Ozification, is their sporting prowess. When I first moved to England, I felt the English could only win Olympic gold if they introduced some categories in which they actually excelled - say, quipping, whipping and queuing. But now look at them. The Ashes, Andy Murray, 19 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
And then there's the newly won reputation as the beer-swilling barbarians of Europe, an Australian preserve since the days of Barry McKenzie and Sir Les. But Australian beer consumption is down, while fine wine sales have skyrocketed. So: who's the snob and who's the yob?
It's no surprise that 200,000 British citizens pack their bags each year, with about a third heading for Australia, the highest number to leave since the heavily subsidised mass emigration Down Under in the 1950s. Is it a craving for an old sense of civilisation? I don't know. But what sweet revenge to be able to condescend to the Poms, for a change. Oh, by the way, Ben, it means "talk down to".
Kathy Lette's latest book,To Love, Honour and Betray, is about an English family moving to Australia.
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