It took a lot for The Age to finally dismiss columnist Catherine Deveny. She is vulgar and humourless, two qualities that usually guarantee popularity with Melburnians. They like them rough and puerile down here.

What makes me write this? Well, Graham Kennedy, for one. While Melbourne crowned him King, the rest of Australia remained nonplussed by him. We occasionally saw him on TV when we lived in Sydney and, quite frankly, we could not understand why he was such a big hit in Victoria. He lacked sophistication, was unappealing personally and did not make me laugh.

My favourite genre is humour and I particularly enjoy satire, but I don’t relate to crudity and Kennedy was crude. People told me that this sort of humour is characteristic of Melbourne and I am at a loss to understand why.

We have been living here in Melbourne for almost two years now and I absolutely love this city. It is sophisticated and very cosmopolitan for an Australian city. So I’m puzzled by Kennedy and Deveny’s “humour”.

I did not relate to Ms Deveny at all. Her columns were simply silly and yet she must have had a following or she would not have been employed by that newspaper. When I saw her on the ABC’s Q&A programme she confirmed my opinion of her. This woman was a shrew who interrupted the other panellists, shrieked and crowed and made herself a nuisance with her pitiful “Look at Me!” behaviour.

Contrary to my opinion of her, Deveny continued to dish out her excrescence for The Age. Until she let loose on twitter last Sunday at the Logies. For those of you who don’t know what the Logies are, they are a poor man’s imitation of the Emmys. Red Carpet interviews with the cream of our TV stars. The sort of “what are you wearing?” questions that we have copied from American TV events. In other words, the Australian television industry’s Night of Nights.

I did not watch it. But I did read that Deveny had insulted Bindi Irwin who is the eleven year old daughter of the late Steve Irwin, by suggesting that she ought to get laid.

Not only that, but she had also unfurled her viper’s tongue via twitter and the good old thumb in the direction of Rove McManus who lost his first wife, Belinda Emmett, to cancer in 2006.

We all felt extreme sadness when Rove’s wife passed away at such a young age and we wished him well in his new relationship. So did Deveny, apparently. Except that she added “I hope Tasma (that’s the second Mrs McManus) doesn’t die too”. How hilarious is that?

In her defence, Deveny explained that she was only trying to be funny. I believe her when she says that. The woman always appears to be trying so very hard to be funny. Being crass and offensive come much more naturally to her, don’t they?

p.s Deveny is now claiming that her dismissal from The Age had to do with class and gender. It’s true that she has no class and as for gender, when under attack a desperate Deveny has resorted to claims of sexism in the whole business. I seriously doubt that she believes what she’s saying. I also doubt that feminists would fall for that one.