A Chunder Down Under...

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd blames mystery illness on fast food snack
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 2:18PM BST 06/06/2008

He has been criticised for spouting jargon and bureaucratic gobbledegook but prime minister Kevin Rudd resorted to down-to-earth Australian vernacular in describing how a fast food snack left him "driving the porcelain bus" for a day or two.

In what indubitably qualified as a case of too much information, Mr Rudd gave details of how the ill-advised choice of snack laid him low.

The Labor leader was taken ill after attending a rugby match in Sydney last month.

This week he had to quash suggestions that he had suffered a minor heart attack brought on by the punishing work load he has shouldered since winning office in November.

His aides initially blamed the "chunder downunder" on "a dodgy dagwood dog" - a battered saveloy sausage served on a stick, one of Australia's least appetizing culinary offerings.

When it emerged that dagwood dogs were not on sale at the game, Mr Rudd pointed the finger of blame at a "party pie", a miniature morsel of beef and pastry.

But that explanation was also later discounted. The mystery of his illness was finally solved on Friday when he revealed that what he had in fact eaten was a chicken sausage known as a kransky.

"My initial advice from my advisers was I'd eaten a dagwood dog, then it could have been a party pie, but I'm reliably informed this morning it could well have been something called a chicken kransky," he told commercial radio, explaining that he rarely paid much attention to what he ate.

"Do you know what a chicken kransky is? Neither do I. Whatever it was, there was a subsequent revisitation."

"I had to give a speech later that morning and I was up most of the night, shall I say, in a graphic fashion."

He said he found the media's interest in the stomach upset baffling and amusing.

"I'm kind of interested in how these things start, we've all had to drive the porcelain bus at some stage."

The use of the vernacular was unusual for Mr Rudd, a former diplomat and policy wonk who frequently lurches into impenetrable civil servant jargon.

He had a rich variety of euphemisms to choose from, including "talking on the big white telephone" and emitting a "technicolour yawn."

It is not the first time Mr Rudd has had to admit to eating something unsavoury. Shortly before his victory in last year's federal election, video footage emerged which showed him scrimmaging around in his ear and then apparently eating his own ear wax, while sitting in parliament.

The footage, which Labor said was leaked by the then government of prime minister John Howard, dated back to Mr Rudd's early years as an MP.

It made international headlines and in the US it was featured on The Tonight Show hosted by Jay Leno.