Kerre Woodham: Curmudgeonly Greer spoke too soon with attack on Irwin

Germaine Greer really is a scabrous old crone. The author of The Female Eunuch has transmogrified into a professional curmudgeon, churning out mean-spirited bile for the Guardian on a weekly basis.

She seems to have it in for her fellow Australians - attacking the people and the country for all manner of sins - but she's really upset people with her attack on Steve Irwin.

Within 24 hours of the Crocodile Hunter's death after being stung by a stingray, Greer was on the warpath. She described Irwin as an embarrassment and a self-deluded animal torturer, and opined that it was hardly surprising he'd come to grief, given the insensitivity with which he'd barged into the domain of animals.

Steve Irwin had been criticised before for the up-close-and-personal approach he took with wildlife, and it's true that Irwin was not universally loved by Australians, with his gung-ho, enthusiastic take on life and his "Crikey!" and his khaki and his wholehearted support of John Howard.

But it's about time and place, and criticism of an icon when their body is still warm is seldom appreciated. As I well know.

Just after I'd started on NewstalkZB, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash. All Monday and all Monday night and all Tuesday the airwaves were full of people expressing their shock, disbelief and horror that Diana was gone. By Tuesday night, I thought it might be time for a reality check, and I opened the show suggesting that people were being a little over the top and that Diana was not a saint. Saints were not in the habit of snogging hairy Arab playboys in St Tropez - and so forth. You get the drift. The reaction was immediate and hostile. I should have died, not Diana. And in fact, I got a number of death threats. I was a heartless bitch, an evil woman, a cold unfeeling person - the lines were jammed with people wanting to tell me how wrong I was. And I was. Not about Diana, because really, let's face it, she wasn't a saint, was she?

But I was wrong to express an opinion like that before people had time to grieve. I didn't get, and I still don't, the mass mourning of iconic figures, but I have learned that sometimes you need to keep your opinions to yourself.

Greer might argue that she's employed to write what she thinks - in fact, it is her job to be as controversial as possible. But her terms of employment surely don't override the boundaries of human decency.