Everyone knows how to confuse a bogan: Tell him an asylum seeker killed a pedophile. But what about haut-gans, those peculiar inner-city Australian creatures who, for all their supposed worldliness, are every bit as parochial and insecure in their country’s greatness as their cousins in the western suburbs? How do you really spin them out?

The answer, it turns out, is easy as friend of the site Bruce Palling recently discovered:

Go to Melbourne and write an article for The Age questioning the city’s self-proclaimed status as the greatest restaurant city in the world. Judging by the outraged comments (“So a 20 year ex-pat thinks he can come home and tell us what our food should be like? Go away Bruce, Aussie food is fabulous almost entirely due to the breadth and width of it’s influences, not despite it. And you can keep your wallaby too”) it won’t be long before Age readers start getting neck tattoos of their favourite restaurants’ logos like so many post codes, Southern Crosses, and inspirational sayings.

Fortunately, Bruce has written an expanded version of his travelogue on much friendlier turf, and it has me wanting to get on the next plane to Tullamarine. With a birthday coming up, the Prick is thinking it might be time to take advantage of the Queens’ Birthday weekend and celebrate by hitting Cutler & Co for some foie gras cigars …