Paul Thomas: The really short book of urbane ocker wit

We live in harrowing times. As if the combined threats of terrorism, global warming and bird flu (I assume they'll tell us when we can stop stockpiling food, surgical masks and Tamiflu) aren't enough to induce a perpetual state of anxiety, it now seems that maleness itself is in mortal danger.

Australia's bloke culture is under siege, and if that mighty citadel falls, the less fortified Kiwi version will surely follow.

According to Mark Latham, former leader of the Australian Labor Party, the Aussie bloke is caught in a deadly pincer movement mounted by "left-feminists" and mealy mouthed neo-conservative geeks (step forward John Howard and Don Brash) intent on sanitising public life and eliminating blokey earthiness.

Latham has done his bit to preserve what remains of this once-vibrant sub-culture, rich in vernacular and the rough, homespun philosophy of the public bar and shearing shed, by releasing a book entitled A Conga Line of Suckholes.

That was his description of the Howard Government's front bench and, presumably, a prime example of the vivid bloke-speak we won't be able to get away with for much longer.

As an aside, is there a more plaintive sound than that of the self-styled man of destiny railing in the wilderness? In mid-2004 Latham was riding high in the polls, apparently a Prime Minister-in-waiting; these days he looks after the kids while the missus goes out to work.

The sub-title - Mark Latham's Book of Quotations - reveals the true purpose of this publication: he's seeking to re-invent himself as a commentator of biting wit and forceful clarity, a modern-day ocker version of everyone's favourite jester/statesman, Winston Churchill.

The contrast between Churchill's precise wit and Latham's bludgeoning abuse brings to mind a spoof in the now-defunct American satiric journal National Lampoon: the circumstances of the Great Man's most celebrated witticisms were revisited but when the narrative got to the punchline, his actual words were replaced by the sort of foul-mouthed outbursts one associates with drunken yahoos at one-day cricket internationals.

Explaining his decision to emerge from a bath without giving Franklin Roosevelt a chance to exit stage left or even avert his eyes, Churchill said: "The Prime Minister has nothing to hide from the President of the United States."

In the National Lampoon version this became "What are you staring at [insert homophobic epithet of choice]?"

A similar gulf exists between Churchill's dismissal of a political opponent as "a sheep in sheep's clothing" and Latham's claim that "Howard has got his tongue up Bush's clacker that often the poor guy must think he's got an extra haemorrhoid".

That invaluable tome Cassell's Dictionary of Slang lists "clacker" as a 19th century term for the mouth or teeth. Clearly the part of George W.'s anatomy into which Howard's tongue supposedly intrudes is at the opposite end of the alimentary canal.

Writers who endeavour to create naturalistic dialogue must keep abreast of the ever-mutating vulgarisms and profanity that permeate social discourse. I'm familiar with many - some might say too many - slang terms for the anus but "clacker" is a new one on me.

I ran "clacker" past an Australian friend, a worldly fellow who must have heard plenty of fruity language in his time. It was a new one on him too, although he was much taken with it; by the end of the evening it was cropping up in his conversation with jarring regularity, as in, for instance, referring to Invercargill as "Clackerville".

I suspect it comes from "cloaca," a Latin term for sewer. It remains to be seen whether Latham's usage will catch on. Given that his book is an extended exercise in crying wolf, it has every chance.

The notion that politicians are especially witty is a relic of a bygone age when parliamentary debates occasionally rose above droning regurgitations of briefing papers and playground taunts. The Collected Wit of our Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition would be very slim volumes with very big print.

David Lange was a shining exception, while across the Tasman Paul Keating stands out in slightly better company. His characterisation of an opponent who tried to re-cycle some tawdry gossip as "a dog returning to its vomit" is almost the perfect insult: curt, brutal and memorable.

Sir Robert Menzies was supposedly a remarkable wit but he's best remembered for a hideously embarrassing speech directed at the Queen which included the lines (from an Elizabethan poet) "I did but see her passing by and yet I'll love her till I die." Where was Latham when Australia really needed him?

While Malcolm Fraser's most notable utterance was the bleak observation that "life wasn't meant to be easy" (particularly rich coming from a scion of the Victorian landed gentry), his predecessor Gough Whitlam did better with his reaction to the news that the Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai drank his own urine every day for health reasons.

(For the information of those who believe longevity is the object of the exercise, Desai assumed office at the age of 81 and lived till 99.)

According to Whitlam this gave a whole new meaning to the term "getting on the piss".