The Bundy

To say I was reluctant to go into work this morning is an understatement; I've worked one day in the last fortnight and was getting quite attached to my lady of leisure status again.

Still, my first job of the morning was a cancelled home visit, which every SLT knows is pure music to the ears, especially on a Monday morning when you've got loads of other things to do like opening your e-mail and brewing up. Unless you're Australian that is, because as you know, the brew isn't high on their list of priorities.

The Australians at work were bearing up pretty well this morning considering they crashed out of the rugby world cup at the weekend, but then I'm not sure they've actually come to terms with the defeat because they're still running the sort of adverts you run while your team's still in the tournament, you know, like footage of an Australian suburb in the middle of the night with all the tellies turned on in the houses and the slogan Australia's Up For It across the bottom of the screen. In Britain we'd have pulled them by now, just like we pull any remotely optimistic adverts about how we're going to win the world cup football the minute we get knocked out by Argentina. I spoke to Karen, my British colleague about it this morning.

"What's with the adverts?" I asked

"Yeah I know" she replied, "It's like they haven't realised they got knocked out"

And then Jackie pitched up looking even thinner than usual and chipped in "We're a sporting nation, denial is how we cope with sporting defeat"

"And that Bundy advert on the telly" continued Karen, "You've gotta be 'avin a larf"

The Bundy advert is part of a new campaign for Bundaberg rum, some sort of paint stripper they brew up in Queensland. I mean, rum's bloody awful to begin with but this stuff's even worse, though the Aussies treat it like nectar and think everyone else feels the same. I suppose it could be something to do with the early days of the colony when, without any monetary currency, the only payment for building roads and houses and keeping the convicts in line was a bottle of rum, just about enough incentive, though I don't know how they brewed it.

Anyway, there's a new advert on the telly and I've got to admit it's hilarious if you can laugh at yourselves long enough not to cry about it. It's based on the assumption that the British want to come to Australia just for the Bundy rum, though it manages to poke fun at Britain relentlessly throughout, showing images of crappy weather and crappy houses and crappy women, which says a lot about how the Aussies rate our lifestyle (and all alongside a song roughly entitled We Wish England Was Australia).

"I wouldn't mind" said Karen, "I'd never even heard of Bundy rum before I came out here. I hardly think it's why the poms are emigrating".

I think she's missing the point, but I love the advert. Just don't show it to me again in January because the Bundy might just clinch it.