That joke isn’t funny any more

I worked in Australia in the early 1990s, a time of economic downturn and uncertainty in the United Kingdom. Many doctors left with a view to possible emigration to Australia. The large expat contingent of Scots, Irish, Welsh, and English junior doctors roamed and chatted in the hospital corridors at 3 am, chasing the overtime. We shared much with the Aussie doctors: binge drinking, gratuitous swearing, rudeness, and sarcastic and generally offensive, abrasive humour. They derided us as whingeing poms, and they in turn were bragging Aussies. They referred to …