Australian humour has a strong scatalogical bent. In fact, a popular Australian piece of slang involves dog turds on dinner plates as in this 2005 example from the SMH:
“As subtle and clever as a fresh dog turd on a dinner plate,” said Djbobbit on another forum.
So the faeces in the gelato scandal that has beset the Coogee Bay Hotel has, I suspect, become an iconic PR debacle in this country.
Australians also love puns and puns that involve bodily functions are the best of all, so we have had a field day:
-poo-cream is ubiquitous of course, and variations like ‘excrement ice cream’
- Gelatigate – is it really comparable to Watergate?
- Gelato whodunnit and what came first the gelato or the ice-cream
These. however, are tame compared to the efforts of some bloggers;
- Coogee Bay Hotel is in a whole lot of sh*t
- How about some poo with your icecream?
- Did Coogee Bay serve up a shitty dessert?
- a shit sundae
All very banal but it’s a horrible PR problem. Any ideas?
UPDATE: The cartoon in Saturday morning’s Daily Telegraph replaces “sh*t sandwich” with “Coogee Bay sandwich”, the progress towards iconic status continues!
