There’s a chap at work who’s punching above his weight. At least, I think he is. OK, he’s a nice enough bloke – in small doses, anyway – but, seriously, you should see his girlfriend. It just doesn’t make any sense. She’s gorgeous, he’s simply not.

My lucky colleague is not short but he certainly doesn’t hit six foot. And he’s stocky – if you’re being polite. If you’re being honest, he’s a former prop forward whose muscle has turned to fat now he’s hit his early thirties.

He’s losing his hair, to the point that he’s shaved it to a number one cut and over- compensates for the whole baldness thing by growing and immaculately crafting a strangely unnerving goatee. And he’s loud, always loud. Everything’s a big, often quite lewd, joke to be shouted across the office, every conversation is sport, fishing, TV or women.

Like I said, nice enough bloke, in small doses, and for the six months or so I’ve shared a water cooler with him, I’ve found him easy enough to bear. But using my thirty-two years of experience, I’d happily pegged him as the perennial under-achiever who masks his lack of confidence with lashings of false outward gusto. Every night, I’d convinced myself, he returns home to his bedsit and sits in front of a Xbox for hours before retiring to bed and weeping softly into his pillow.

But then I met his bird. And that theory was blown out of the water.

I’d been talked into after-work drinks, just a couple in the bar round the corner from the office. Loud, goatee boy was there, but said he could only stay for one because his girlfriend was coming to pick him up.

I put this down to fantasist exaggeration, but, no, he wasn’t making it up. Ten minutes in, the door opens and Elle McPherson’s younger, slightly better looking sister sashays in, pecks him on the cheek and utters ‘hi, doll’ to her short, fat beau. I tried not to be too agog as the introductions were made, but there’s no getting away from the fact that I was. Agog. I was agog.

This could, of course, have been a one-off. Back in Blighty, every now and then you’d get a male minger with a much better-looking other half. Here though, two things were different.

Firstly, the gulf, in my eyes, was larger than I’d ever witnessed before.

And secondly, the Australians I pointed out the huge difference to, simply didn’t agree. When, for instance I suggested to Sarah, my line manager, that goatee boy must have a pretty big trust fund kicking around or something, she just looked at me quizzically and said that she – no monster herself – found him quite attractive too.

Over the next few days I did a sly straw poll, gently quizzing female colleagues on fat boy’s rating out of 10 and, although they weren’t all licking their lips, they all agreed that he was a decently turned out chap.

Which was the point that I realised – the rules are different in Australia.

Yes, what makes men – and indeed women, for that matter – attractive to the opposite sex in Australia may at first glance seem the same as back home, but probe into the small print and you’ll find that there’s some big, big differences down under.

Goatee boy, for instance, is a very good example. Back home, he’d be, at best, the comic relief in any social group. More likely, however, is that he’d be on the outskirts, looking in, not quite understanding why he just can’t get a girlfriend. Here, though, he’s in his element for one simple reason – Aussie women honestly like bad boys.

Back in the UK, your liberated young lady may often talk about the attractions of a bit of rough and agree that occasionally taking home a tattooed, foul-mouthed chav can be a pleasant distraction, but the reality is that that kind of chap’s very much an endangered species back home. Bras long burnt, British women, when they’re looking long-term, are looking for someone with decency, a moral compass, someone they can trust, someone who is their equal – and sees them in the same way.

In Australia, men are still meant to be men.

Here, to make the kind of sweeping generalisation WP is well known for, Australian women don’t want their men to be the same as them. They want rugged, they want going out fishing all day on a Saturday, they want swearing. They don’t want help with the children. They do want to be in charge of the house. They want to lay out their husband’s clothes in the morning and have his tea ready for him when they come home. In return, they want the mortgage paid, a 4x4 with a vanity numberplate, membership at a posh gym and most mornings in a nice restaurant with their – female, obviously – friends. They don’t want boys as friends. They just want boyfriends.

So goatee boy may be loud, brash, crude and slightly overweight, but he’s onto a winner because he’s financially stable and, most importantly, masculine. In his no-nonsense, straight-talking, burping, farting, spitting way he’s channelling Australian male icons throughout history – Ned Kelly, Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Hugh Jackman. Alf off of Home and Away. Real men. Tough, take your shirt off and build a wall men. 

Which means, of course – and this is a word of warning for any sensitive types out there considering emigrating – there’s no place for Hugh Grant in this hot red land, a fact that clearly highlights the differences between here and back home.

Down under, a poetic soul and a huge swathe of sensitivity just isn’t going to get you anywhere. Stumbling around being inept at practical things is not going to be perceived as cute and fragile, it’s going to be mocked mercilessly and then dumped in favour of a tyre fitter called Wayne from Bob Jane’s T-Mart. If you’re the kind of man who can’t change a wheel, understands the merits of owning a small car, doesn’t get why sport is important or would pay someone else to fix the wiring in your home, you’re going to die alone.

You want to succeed here? Keep your feelings to yourself, always drink beer from the bottle, invest in a fine selection of power tools and lock away any books that don’t have a sportsman on the front.

If you’re now running your hand through your floppy fringe panicking that as an Englishman abroad you aren’t going to get any down under, don’t worry. It’s not that Australian women have something against British men per se, it’s just that they don’t suffer wimps. James Bond registers on the totty-o-metre for Aussie women, as they’ll forgive his Martini drinking simply because he can punch out a bad guy without breaking into a sweat. David Beckham’s a pin-up here, but the girls are cooing only about his pecs and his ability on a sports field, they’re not really that interested in whether or not he’s a good father to Romeo, Brooklyn and the other one . . . Basingstoke, or something. Compare, if you will, Beckham to the big sporting pin up down under – Ben Cousins. Ben’s a real bad boy, plenty of scandal and plenty of women, but he’s great at the Australian rules football thing and he, like Becks, has a sculpted torso and nice tattoos.

Aussie women, you see really do just want their men to be men. There is still, for instance, a massive and quite scary biker culture here. While motorbikes and leather may have been left behind where the march of the new man is strong, here having the right patch on the back of your jacket still holds a lot of sway and works, so I’m reliably informed, as quite the babe magnet.

And look, if you will, at the more well-do-to power houses. The men who hold the political sway here are not the caring, hands-on fathers of New Labour; they are hard-talking, sexist, boozing stereotypes. Troy Buswell, one time leader of a state Liberal party is still considered an attractive man despite being caught sniffing a woman’s chair. Even our eminent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd defies his nerdy looks by revealing himself as having a propensity to swear like a Tourettes sufferer and reduce female air stewards to tears if his dinner’s not up to scratch.

Basically, big, tough, bad men rule down under and women want them.

Which leads to the big irony in male/female relationships in Australia.

You’d think that with Aussie women lusting after the kind of man who will pick them up and throw them over their shoulder, Aussie men would find their hearts beating faster at the thought of a doormat.

Not so.

Maybe it’s a throwback to the early days of the settler, but Australian women need to be hard too. Yes, they need to be all woman, but they also need to be capable. OK, so they still have to take care of all the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, but they have to do so with their jaw set hard. As much as Hugh Grant ain’t gonna make any headway in Australia, Bridget Jones won’t find herself whisked away on any minibreaks either. Aussie men don’t want to see tears or trembling bottom lips – they want a tough cookie.

This bald fact, unlike most of what we spout on these pages, I can actually back up with a bit of cut and dried research from an institute that is a long respected expert in the arena of the study of female attractiveness. FHM magazine.

Each year, presumably at great effort to all those involved, this revered institution puts together a list of the world’s 100 most attractive women. Where this essential piece of research benefits us here at WP, is they produce separate lists for each of their magazines. As such we can see what the readers of FHM Australia find attractive – and therefore be happy in the knowledge that this is a fair assessment of what men nationwide believe.

And the chaps of this big red land have voted in their droves for women who are not just drop dead gorgeous, but are also hard as nails.

Top of the list was Megan Fox. Jaw-droppingly attractive, yes, but also renowned for, at least in her role in Transformers, being able to strip down a six-cylinder engine. Since then, she’s not seen many offers to play characters from Jane Austen books. No, you can currently catch her as a demon in hotpants in Jennifer’s Body.

And let’s go down the list. In at two, The Veronicas. You’re not going to mess with them are you? Also in the top 20 are the likes of Kate ‘I kill werewolves’ Beckinsale, Angelina Jolie, and Rihanna, none of whom are going to blub if you forget their birthday.

There are models in the Aussie list, by the way, but they’re tough Aussie birds – Miranda Kerr, Jennifer Hawkins – not your Kate Mosses or Naomi Campbells. Miranda and Jennifer you can picture clearing a gutter and changing the oil in her Landcruiser while still having your pie and chips on the table in plenty of time – one would put money on Kate and Naomi balking at that. 

In comparison, let’s take a look at how the British voted in their version of the poll. In at number one? Cheryl Cole.

Now, for all that Cheryl’s a pretty young thing, you can’t help but think she’d be hard work. Would she let you out on a Friday night to go clubbing with the boys and then drive into Northbridge and pick you up at 3am when you can’t find a cab? Is she going to put up with you dropping your bait boxes in the middle of the living room? Is she going to come and watch V8 racing with you? I think not.

And let’s have a look at who else is at the top of the British 100. Look, there’s Britney Spears and Jessica Alba at three and four. Hmm, hard work, I reckon, so the men of Australia are giving them a wide berth.

All in all, then, if you’re going to get some action in Australia – as a chap or a girl –  you’re simply going to have to toughen up. I, then, am off to trade my Oscar Wilde collection for Chris Judd’s autobiography before nipping to the pub to start a fight, sure in the knowledge I’ll either wake up alongside a Megan-lookalike or in casualty.