Leading article: Cooking up a storm

Gordon Ramsay has found himself in another kitchen nightmare Down Under. Last year, the celebrity chef was hauled across a roaring barbie by the Australian senate for his swearing. And now he has been plunged into scalding water over some ungallant comments about a female Australian TV host. No less a figure than the country's prime minister has been moved to describe Ramsay as "a new form of lowlife".

Without wishing to condone Ramsay's behaviour one cannot help but note his remarkable ability to alienate his normally easy-going Antipodean hosts. It surely takes a special type of coarseness to offend a sensibility as robust as that which has traditionally prevailed in The Lucky Country. This is, after all, a land in which the leader of the opposition once publicly labelled the government front bench as "a conga line of suck holes".

Could Ramsay's problem be that his insults are simply not inventive enough?