It was through listening to an ABC programme called Incognito that AA Phillips penned his seminal 1950 Meanjin essay entitled The Cultural Cringe.

The show, which aired on a Sunday, broadcast two performances, one by a local and one by a foreigner.

The idea was for listeners to guess who was the "overseas executant," as Phillips put it.

The show was predicated on the self-belittling notion that Australians would think the international performer was innately superior and therefore feel "a nice glow of patriotic satisfaction" whenever they were proved wrong.

The programme's producers had "rightly diagnosed a disease of the Australian mind," reckoned Phillips, "an assumption that the domestic cultural product will be worse than the imported article".

It was a disease that, for decades,

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