We English Shiny Bums are having great fun with this. The Oz Shiny Bum Singers (well, the 5 who are making it over to England) will be performing at the National School of Government in Sunningdale, the Met Office in Exeter, and the Department for Transport in Westminster, as well as Bude festival and the Rochester Good Intent.

Advance publicity for the SBS performance at the Department for Transport was published today in our internal bulletin (the first time the word "bum" has appeared in our internal bulletin, we think), and despite a letter of introduction from the Head of the Australian Public Service, and support from the DfT's new Permanent Secretary, some people are still nervous that this is a leg-pull.

The Head of the Australian Public Service is Peter Shergold (an English immigrant), but we haven't traced a Bampton connection yet.

Kitty