You are what you eat ... arguably

In Australia, where I am at the moment, the big gossip item is whether Robert (Shock of the New, The Fatal Shore) Hughes used the term "curry-muncher" in anger. The background is as follows. On May 28 last year, the great art critic was returning from a day's fishing near Perth, Western Australia, when he was involved in a car accident. The circumstances were confused. There was a trial in early May this year, to determine whether Hughes (who had been severely injured) was guilty of reckless driving. Charges were eventually dropped. But during the proceedings Hughes took violent exception to the crown prosecutor, Lloyd Rayney, an Australian of Indian extraction. Hughes thought the lawyer was "overzealous" in his grandstanding and his manifest eagerness to claim the scalp of the most famous living Australian.

An exasperated Hughes, according to two journalists, who are standing firmly by their story, made a number of derogatory remarks about Rayney in interviews given outside the Broome Magistrates Court on May 9 - the most virulent of which was the "curry-munching" jibe (a racist slur more often heard from South African than Australian whites).

Hughes firmly denies that he did any such thing: "I am not given to references of that sort," he insists. He none the less concedes that he did introduce the word "curry" when talking about the obstreperous Rayney (there is radio evidence that he did). "Not a comment that would win any prize for political correctness," he further concedes.

As The Australian declared primly on May 2: "Hughes's use of the word curry, and its context, remains offensive." Its "context", of course, is Rayney's ancestry.

Hughes can hand out criticism: none better. He is less willing to accept it. He is meditating a book by way of counterattack called Crashing. "Revenge," he proclaims darkly, "is a dish best eaten cold." Unlike curry.

Is allusion to ethnic food objectionable? It depends. When racist fans pelt Afro-British soccer players with bananas it's as sickeningly racist as neo-Nazis holding up watermelons when they parade through the black residential areas of southern US towns. When I lived in California, my schoolboy son would sometimes refer to his Hispanic schoolmates (of whom there were many) as "beaners". The allusion was to refried beans (I never did find out what refrying was). What should I call them? Jack would ask, grumpily. If they're second generation, I would explain, chicanos; if first generation, Mejicanos. By that point, I had lost him. Beaners it was.

I may be wrong but "beaners" always struck me as relatively inoffensive. I would have come down as much more the heavy father if he had called his Jewish schoolmates "bagel-snappers" (although one heard that term often enough in the streets).

There are the same variations in obnoxiousness in this country. When I was at school, any boy named Clark would be nicknamed Nobby; any Smith would be Smudger; and any Murphy, Spud.

The last of these referred to the Irish national vegetable. It was (and probably still is) the least derogatory of sobriquets. Not even at closing time on Saturday night in a Dublin pub could you start a fight by calling the nearest Paddy a "spud-muncher". And the Eire football team would most likely be amused by a barrage of tubers on to the pitch.

But in today's Euro-sensitive Britain it is no longer acceptable to call Germans krauts (because they relish pickled cabbage) or the French frogs because they like to dine on Kermit's kind (my favourite recipe in the Larousse Gastronomique begins, "Take one pig's ear and clean it well").

And what of ourselves? One of last year's film box-office successes was The Limey, starring Terence Stamp. It was about an Englishman going on the rampage in the US. Why are the English so called? Because 300 years ago, the first thing English mariners did when they made land in America was to munch limes, to remedy their scurvy. But no one, I think, is hurt by that term. It's not exactly affectionate but we Limeys can grin and bear it.

It's a verbal-gastronomic minefield. And it's more confusing nowadays because, whatever our ethnic affiliation, we're all curry-munchers or bagel-snappers, connoisseurs of French, German, Mexican and even Irish cuisine. And who are the world's largest consumers of limes? Americans, in their margueritas. Damned tequila sippers.