Mr Ivor Novello, a film actor, has presented a play in London in which he depicts certain Australians as "bulging with bullion and bad manners." To press criticism he replies that, though he has never been in Australia, the many Australians he has seen in London are just as clumsy and crude as those he depicts.

I had often had a yearning
For that true patrician touch
That combines good taste and learning
   With the mien that means so much.
But my background is Australian;
   So the vulgar taint that clings
To my aura made me alien
   To all really nicer things.
 
For I haven't got the flair or the air debonair,
The insousance ineffable that most film actors wear.
I despaired of class and culture; but I've learned my lesson now,
Since a highly cultured fellow, named Novello, showed me how.
 
You just take a few odd samples
   You have seen upon the Strand
As the typical examples
   From a crude but unknown land;
You exaggeate their rudeness
   In a charming, sneering way
And you ridicule their crudeness
   In a modern sort of way.
 
Here is proof you are "aloof," gently bred in warp and woof.
Shove the bounders in the pillory, then gibber at them "Goof!"
Tho' a few old-fashioned fogeys murmur, "Cheap"; why notice these?
Since your puppets save your standing by their own vulgarities?

"Den"
Herald, 13 January 1933, p8