Under the counter

Where men chunderI've been called a lot of less than flattering things in my life: home wrecker, drunken moron, feckless wastrel and pitiful scrounger are some of the more printable. However, as my fellow Londoners will attest, with the amount of Australians living in my formerly great home city perhaps the most common insult thrown my way is the charming Antipodeanism 'soap-dodging pom'. Now as it happens my personal hygiene has been a bit up and down over the years but then in my defence it is not always easy to remain as clean as one would wish when one is spending one's nights alternating between a canal towpath and the floor of the gents' lavatories in the Coach and Horses. As I've said before, 1978 was not a good year for me. Still, and despite my efforts to take the abuse in good heart,...