I’m thinking of getting my British passport renewed. Which is a kind of confession I know.

Ok yes, I admit it … I am half a pom. In cricketing terms this is quite handy because it means I’m a winner whenever there is an Ashes series happening. Although the corollary of that is, I have just realized that I am also always a loser as well.

My Englishness is on my father’s side. He was born in the South East London suburb of Catford in the Borough of Lewisham. He always used to boast that he was born near the dog track there. It’s not there now but it was quite famous in its day and was known as the Catford Dogs. Yes, that is odd, I agree.

My lineage on my dad’s side is all on the south side of the River Thames and there is no blue blood at all in the ancestral lineage. We are, as they say, common as muck.

My mother’s family is Scottish on all sides which may explain my fondness for haggis. Her people came to Queensland in the middle of the 19th century when Brisbane may not have been the most comfortable place to be but I guess that at least it was warmer than Dundee.

I think it’s wonderful that Australia is such a multicultural country but I’m also proud to be strongly Anglo Celtic as boring as that may seem. My wife is a McLean and she’s very Scottish and we recently had our DNA tested through Ancestry.com and it just confirmed what we already thought – she is mainly Scottish and I am English and Scottish with a touch of Scandinavia.

Maybe there’s a bit of Viking blood there, who knows? If I start wearing funny hats with horns on them, I guess that will be the proof of the pudding.

Being half a pom was accentuated for me by living in Hong Kong for seven years as a kid. I knew I was an Aussie but my education was British and Hong Kong was a British colony and by the time I got back to Australia at the age of 13 I had a plummy English accent. Let me tell you that did not go down well at Miami State High School in 1970.

I quickly lost that accent and learnt to speak Australian although it took a while. I had no idea what fair dinkum meant or what board shorts were and thongs to me were called flip-flops.

I am an Anglophile to be sure even though that may not be as fashionable now as it once was. And I grew up on British comedy and can recite sketches by The Goons, Tommy Cooper and Benny Hill off by heart although Benny got cancelled years ago, didn’t he?

So, I’m half a pom and I can’t help it. I just have to live with it. But there is a problem. Due to my dual citizenship, I can never become Prime Minister. Yes, I know, it’s disappointing, isn’t it?