As you can see, my name is John Bogan. That’s right, John BOGAN!
Growing up in the 1980s with this name was bad enough with the Kylie Mole skits in The Comedy Company. Now I hear ‘bogan’ has become an official word in the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as a ‘depreciative term for an unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, especially of low social status’.
Look, I am happy to cop the ‘unfashionable’ and maybe even the ‘uncouth’ in that definition, but when it comes to beer, my brother and I (no, his name isn’t Dazza) would like to think we are fairly sophisticated. We travelled the US together tasting craft beers, and my own beer adventures since then have lead me to find a career in the craft brewing industry (no watery lagers for this bogan!).
So when we discovered a new craft beer from Tassie we wanted to try, I gave the brewery a call and left a message about having some sent to me. When they called me back, I could hear laughter in the background, like I was on speakerphone to the whole brewery, and the bloke talking to me was trying to stifle his own laugh while he asked for my name. Then, once I said my name, all he asked me was did I want a free shirt from the brewery.
Thinking these Tassie folk were a bit looney and starting to wonder if this beer they brewed even existed, it all made sense when he mentioned the brewery’s slogan …
‘Not suitable for bogans.’
… Safe to say, since then I have become an unofficial mascot for the brewery, and the beer we ordered from them is definitely suitable for these bogans!