Any serious historian will tell you that the pinnacle of Australia’s cultural achievement was when Liz Hurley agreed to marry Shane Warne. Finally we had something we could genuinely be proud of.
There are countless reasons why their love has captivated and inspired a nation, ranging from the superficial to the deeply spiritual. Firstly, obviously, it’s a matter of aesthetics. You only have to take in the bee-stung lips, accentuated cheekbones and thick luscious hair to know that you are looking at one of the world’s great beauties, and it’s fair to say that Liz is pretty good looking too.
Secondly, it is a deep emotional connection. Nothing whispers true love like sending sweet messages of longing to your betrothed for their precious eyes alone, assuming one’s other one million followers are all doing something else at the time.
Besides, even if Warnie and Liz’s charming Twitter messages to each other did happen to be seen by someone else it wouldn’t matter, as only each of them can truly understand the other. This is partly because of the special bond that only they share and partly because Warnie’s grammar is indecipherable to anyone whose first language is English.
Indeed, so committed to the medium is Warnie that he communicates with Liz via Twitter even when they are in the same room together.
“@ElizabethHurley being very supportive & giving me lots of cuddles,my future wife being very sweet & thinks I will get at least 2 wkts”
Thankfully, lest there was any doubt about the veracity of Warnie’s story, Liz confirmed: “Being v nice to @warne888.” One can only imagine their verbal interactions are just as stimulating.
But the third and most important aspect of their connection is that they have each found someone who matches their class, which is a nice way of saying neither of them has any.
What follows next is another moment of groundbreaking history: For the first and only time in my life I am going to criticise Shane Warne and defend someone from Perth.
The reason we love Warnie is because he’s a massive bogan with fake hair and a glass jaw. Like most people with a glass jaw, he thinks it’s pissfunny when anyone else gets sledged - indeed the barometer of whether a sledge is any good or not is how far Warnie is bent over laughing. But should anyone dare to take the piss out of him in even the gentlest possible way, such as by asking if he might have put on a little weight or having a seagull offer him a cigarette, he cries like a baby girl, albeit one that’s had 12 liquid pounds of botox pumped into her face.
And so when he was approached by diminutive TV sports reporter Caty Price at Perth Airport and asked why he didn’t captain his own side in their losing game in Perth you can see him cracking the sads again, refusing to answer this most benign question or even acknowledge the young woman’s existence with a mild “no comment”.
Instead he just stares straight ahead with his face completely expressionless, which again is not particularly difficult in his current condition.
Then Liz basically gives the journalist a hip-and-shoulder that would put Jason Akermanis to shame and when she is politely asked a question rounds upon the poor girl crawls up in her face and tells her to “f… off”.
Then, after a performance that would have won her a spot on Essex Girls, she struts off happy and later tweets something about finding it hard to resist pancakes.
And there it is in a nutshell: Shane and Liz might be fun to watch from a distance and seem just as friendly and down-to-earth as can be during their illiterate exchanges on social media but the truth is they are just snobs.
Were they suffering from some particular trauma or even having a bad day this might have been an understandable loss of temper but as Liz’s cheerful and carefree later tweets showed she was as happy as could be.
Rather it seems that while the couple I will now call Whurley happily gorge at the trough in corporate boxes and garden parties when it comes to things like basic manners or treating ordinary people with respect it simply doesn’t occur to them.
On the other hand if someone says or does something Warney doesn’t like on the cricket pitch he thinks nothing of throwing a cricket ball at them.
In anybody else this would be diagnosed as extreme narcissism verging on psychopathy, an apparent conviction that other people simply don’t matter and even the most basic rules of society, such as common courtesy, do not apply to them.
Imagine, for example, if a journalist or a politician or even a member of the public had done the same thing. It would be unthinkable and inexcusable. That’s why the only time you see similar behaviour on camera it’s coming from drunken thugs or a defendant exiting a courtroom.
Yet because it’s a celebrity and a sports star it’s at best a curiosity. Our adulation effectively proves them right in thinking they are above society and above the rules that make our society civil.
But, as a certain other sports star found out this week, the rules have a way of catching up with us all.
If you can read this without moving your lips follow me on Twitter here: @Joe_Hildebrand
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