The June Wooster Sauce with application forms for the October formal dinner had only been out a few days, and yet 70 tickets of the 100 available had been taken, he said.

He reminded those who were in need of it that the cricket match against the Sherlock Holmes Society was on Sunday 14th July at West Wycombe. Hilary Bruce will be in touch with the S.H. Society to see if a bus can be arranged from central London to the pitch, and will post the result on the website; so keep tapping in. (Postscript: Hilary regrets to report that after discussions with the Sherlock Holmes Society she has been unable to arrange a bus from central London to the cricket pitch at High Wycombe.)

Our chairman, forced to admit that's what he was, added mysteriously "but not for long", which was a reminder that the next Savage Club meeting on 12th November would also be the AGM of the Society. The record time taken for an AGM was eight minutes, and he asked all members just to agree with everything and we should be able to lower that.

He introduced our speaker for the evening: one of the Patrons of the Society, the much loved Australian, or Ozzie as I believe they are called, Murray Hedgcock. He would speak about "Plum and Oz".

Fellow Wodehouseans (began Murray) you see before you the subject for two HM Bateman cartoons - First "The Man Who Defied the Chairman". Shameful, but true. The Colonel gave me my briefing some weeks ago: "Hedgcock, you will speak for 20 minutes on 'The Australian View of Wodehousean England'," he barked in best parade ground style. I saluted. Yes, sir, I said, as one does. But on reflection, this assignment seemed, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit tricky. And the more I mulled, the more tricky did it become. So, putting that proposal in the Too Hard basket - while mentally conceding such an escape route would never be available in Murphy's Whitehall - I subtly switched titles, and will talk on quite a different topic. This became the second HM Bateman cartoon, "The Man Who Dared to Criticise Wodehouse". My talk is ... Plum's Prejudice against Australia.

J'ACCUSE. With regret and indeed anguish, I accuse Pelham Grenville Wodehouse of a great wrongdoing, committed against a noble and deserving segment of humanity - the nation of Australia, and Australians. I offer you the premise that there is distinct, obvious and quite unforgiveable prejudice against Godzone Country (as we know it) throughout the Wodehouse saga.

Given Plum's continuing love affair with the States, you do understand why so many Wodehouse characters spent time in the lost colony of America. Many PGW heroes appear to have enjoyed a sort of extended gap year in the States, occupied in many directions - not least Lord Ickenham (who in a varied career admitted to punching a beautiful cow ...). That's fair enough: after all, PGW wrote with a calculating and justified eye on the American market, so local color could only help the production line and its profits. But Plum's obstinate refusal to identify Australian opportunity is all too obvious: it can be traced back to those distant days of the school stories with which PGW first made his name. Look at Mike, which appeared in The Captain in 1909. Where does Mike's father make - and lose - his money? Where is Wyatt, that sturdy breaker-out after lights and potter-at-cats, sent to make good. when he falls out finally with his insufferable step-father/housemaster? Is it to Australia, land of opportunity? No - it jolly well is not. It is Argentina. We know they play a lot of cricket in Argentina and have done so for many years - but I submit this as a distinct, identifiable, unforgiveable early example of Wodehousean blindness, either deliberate or unconscious, about the qualities of Australia ...

I move on, to cite "The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace", first seen in The Strand magazine in October, 1922. "The Colonies are the only place for wild youths like Eustace and Claude," says Aunt Agatha firmly.

But which colony? Why South Africa? I know that South Africa was then, and is now, an acceptable enough distant destination - but why were the twins lined up jobs there, which it was hoped would make them financially independent, and would certainly keep them well away from the relieved bosom of their sorely-tested family for a long, long time, when Australia was at hand? I mean to say - Australia had been accepting the sweepings, leavings, offcuts and director's cuts from the Homeland for 134 years when PGW wrote that story: surely even so unworldly a character might have picked up the hint that here was the ideal dustbin for rejects from all classes of British life?

Plum did in fact find Australia a suitable prospective repository for one unwanted item. In his study on Christmas presents, in Louder and Funnier, he wrote of the way the unloveable present tends to be recycled around a circle of friends and acquaintances, to the point that you may end up in time getting your own present back. He quoted a Smoker's Ideal Comrade, received on Christmas Day, 1922, which in 1930 turned up among his own gifts. "I am sending it to a friend in Australia whither, I feel sure, it has never yet penetrated", says Plum. I can confirm I never received the Smoker's Ideal Comrade as a result ...

In Over 70, Plum tells his life story - more or less - explaining how on his second trip to New York, in 1909, he sold short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier's, on the same morning, for $200 and $300 - the equivalent of nearly one-fifth of his recent annual earnings as a freelance in London. "The discovery that American editors were prepared to pay on this stupendous scale was like suddenly finding a rich uncle from Australia." Well - it's a rather mercenary light in which to view Godzone, as we know it. But we understand his reasoning. And there does appear to be just such a rich uncle from the Antipodes in the one story featuring a major Australian character. This is "Ukridge and The Old Stepper", written in 1928, which did not appear in book form for a dozen years, until it came with Eggs, Beans and Crumpets.

You will recall how Ukridge is sadly disillusioned when the apparent wealth and generosity of his newfound Uncle Percy from Australia turns out to be a mere reflection of the man's innate Antipodean gift for scrounging - acquiring illegally everything from roses and a sundial, to a summer-house. Curiously, I grew up in my native land more aware of the verb "to souvenir" than "to scrounge" - but the meaning is the same.

The more I look at it all, the more I am convinced that the lovely if brassy Dolly Molloy must have had Australian blood. I quote from "Ice in the Bedroom", when she decides to pose as a photo-journalist from Time magazine. Husband Soapy points out the snag: "But you haven't got a camera". To which the resourceful Dolly responds, "I'll pick one up at Selfridge's this afternoon". What might be termed The Australian Approach.

Tony Ring also has dug out for us the Australian element in the story, "Dudley is Back to Normal", which appeared in the Strand magazine in 1939, but nowhere else until included in the splendid Plum Stones series, in 1994. This records how Dudley Finch, one of the many male butterflies badly singed by fluttering too close to the flaming red hair and personality of Bobbie Wickham, had been delighted to be hauled off to the safety of Australia by his godfather, Sampson Broadhurst, far from Bobbie and her formidable mother.

Two years spent mostly in the company of sheep leaves Dudley quite pleased to be back in the homeland, bringing with him his Australian fiancée. Does PGW give her an entrancing, enticing name? He does not: Ellabelle Prebble, she is called. Meeting Bobbie and explaining that he is affianced, Dudley is asked; "Nice girl?" "Oh, of the best." "What's her name?" "Ellabelle." "How perfectly foul." "Oh, it's all right. I call her Stinker."

I assume Ellabelle was Plum's version of an appropriate Australian girl's name - long before Charlene, Raelene, Kaelene, Kylie and the rest. But I am very dubious about that line of Dudley's - "I call her Stinker". That just doesn't fit with the Australia I know, over many generations.

Aussies from time immemorial have referred to the girlfriend or the wife simply as "The Missus". She was of course once "a bonzer sheila" - but that pleasing usage, I fear, has long died out. She might have been referred to as "a sort" - or beyond that, "a good sort". Or of course in today's somewhat stark Australian usage - accepted to the point that it even appears in court reports - she might just have been "my de facto" (if their relationship had gone beyond normal Wodehousean constraints).

Now - a significant question. Did Plum actually know any Australians? Yes, certainly one or two. But I have a feeling that they were of the class that had "gone native": they were Aussies who became perhaps even more British than the British, from inclination, or simply because they spent much of their life in this country.

PGW certainly would have met one Australian stage star when he made his Lord's debut for Authors v. Actors. The opponents included one Aussie, as well as the great C. Aubrey Smith, Gerald du Maurier, fresh from his triumph in a new play by J M Barrie, as Hook in Peter Pan; and H B Warner, to make his Hollywood name as Christ in the epic King of Kings. The Australian was Oscar Asche, born in Geelong in 1871, who went on the London stage in the Nineties. In 1916 he wrote the book and lyrics, as well as starring in, the legendary musical play Chu Chin Chow, a retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Its most famous melody is probably The Cobbler's Song (I had a Freudian slip in typing that and made it The Cobber's Song - which seems apposite). Asche starred in the production at His Majesty's from August 1, 1916 to 1921 - an astonishing 2,238 performances.

This was a record for a London stage show until overtaken by some cheesy thriller about catching mice, or somesuch. Asche was a heavyweight actor, effective in Shakespeare, and a notable Othello. He played in three of those Authors-Actors matches, and there must have been time for PGW to get to know him, not least for their mutual stage interest. This would have been a marvellous opportunity for a lad from Geelong - the Victorian provincial city where I did my journalistic cadetship - to inform the young Wodehouse about the world Down Under. Probably like all Aussies, he was far to shy to speak up ...

Gubby Allen was perhaps the one Australian with whom Plum was known to have been genuinely friendly. Allen may have gone to Eton, captained Middlesex and England, and for long dominated English cricket and especially Lord's and MCC as Treasurer of the club - but he was Sydney-born.

Plum has written of Allen's disapproval of Australian cricketing authority and Australian umpiring - so what else is new? - as recorded when the defeated England captain made his way home to England via Hollywood after the 1936-37 Test series. Allen then achieved quite a notable feat - 3-2 series defeat, after leading 2-0, so you can appreciate his irritation. Allen was "a very good chap. I met him two years ago at le Touquet," says Plum, adding sadly that he was "a bit soured by it all". Did this reinforce Wodehousean reluctance to give Australia and Australians star billing in his work?

But was Plum's attitude to Australia coloured initially and irretrievably by the fact that he missed the extraordinary climax to one of the greatest days in all cricket history - Jessop's Match, the final Test of 1902. We know bank clerk Wodehouse saw a slice of play on that memorable day, rushing from Lombard Street to The Oval, seeing three England wickets fall for ten runs, rain interrupt play, and then required to race back to the City, in full expectation of defeat for his team. And of course he missed Jessop's century in 75 minutes, and finally Hirst and Rhodes, the last wicket pair, scoring the fifteen runs needed for victory as the light worsened and steady rain set in. You would need to be even more amiable than was our Plum not to feel aggrieved at missing such a climax. No wonder he quit the bank and moved full-time into writing.

Incidentally, I wonder why Plum passed up the opportunity to make use of Strine, that notable enrichment of the English language which my countrymen have contributed to English culture. A writer with such an ear for words and skill in their use, could surely have wallowed in the argot and pronunciation that marks us all out from you British lot ...

And Plum surely missed out by never setting a Jeeves and Bertie story in Australia, perhaps offering refuge for BW at some time when Aunt Agatha was pursuing him with her hatchet at its sharpest, and neither the Continent nor even New York seemed far enough away from the sweep of her dreaded blade.

Bertie would at first be slightly taken aback in the Great South land at being called Bert by the locals - but Jeeves would be positively rocked at becoming "Jeevesey" to all. Or - even worse, once his christian name is known - "Reg" ...

I do see great comic possibilities in, say, Bertie making friends with an amiable chappie and learning that he is the son of a squatter. BW assumes this means the chap lives, probably with a collection of down-at-heel friends, in some empty property they have taken over to gain rent-free accommodation. He is saddened at the way the blighter has fallen from a privileged start in life, having gone to Geelong Grammar, the Eton of Australia, and then even to Bertie's old alma mater of Oxford, before finding his present lowly social level. It would then be required of Jeeves to explain to the Young Master that his friend is not that sort of squatter, but in this upside-down country the term means the affluent owner of a big farming property, on which his ancestors had squatted - or annexed - perhaps as long ago as two centuries back. Same principle as today's squatters: just different outcome - and different social standing.

The Australia visit would be a continuing battle between Bertie's slightly bemused but intrigued acceptance of local mores, and Jeeves's continuing bitter opposition. Bertie would invite Jeeves to stock up on Australian wines - whereupon Jeeves would state coldly that he could not see his way to serving anything called Wombat Port, Dingo Sherry, Bruce Brandy, or Wallaby Whisky.

But the crunch would come inevitably over a matter of fashion, when Bertie - or Bert - succumbed to local style, and sauntered into the Sydney sunshine in the Australian businessman's approved rig of shirt, tailored shorts, and long socks. Jeeves would find this the last straw: "We may be residing temporarily in the colonies, sir - but that does not obligate us to follow colonial custom. I fear I must give notice, to allow me to return to London and civilisation."

Bertie of course seeks to dig in his toes, deciding that in a free 'n easy country like Australia, he is at last going to break free from the bonds set around him over long years by Jeeves. But then he succumbs to a nasty case of badly sunburned knees, and decides after all, that Jeeves, as usual Knows Best ...

There, I rest my case, with the final comment that I do sincerely feel this matter of the Australian influence on PGW deserves further, intensive, detailed study. I should like to see a doctoral thesis compiled on it. And I am quite prepared, from simple devotion to the Wodehousean cause, to rough it at the University of Wagga Wagga for the requisite number of years, if the society or some kindly individual will sponsor me. I commend this most worthy cause to your considered attention ...

...........

After loud applause we began to re-assess the Master, and after another short snort most of us were pretty

Gruntled