U on Sunday: Rory Gibson – What men really talk about when they are together

When men get together, among the jokes and banter, there’s plenty to discuss. Rory Gibson reveals the insights from a recent all-blokes surf trip and shares eight things men talk about when women aren’t around — and it’s not what you think.

An insight into what men really discuss when women aren’t around. Picture: iStock

THINGS men talk about — Episode 15.

(Continuing a random series fulfilling the overarching brief of this column, which is to give women an insight into how men think.)

The setting: I’m on a surfing trip to Indonesia with five friends — a banker, a dyslexic IT entrepreneur, a cabinet maker, a print business owner and an engineer. We spend all day in the water talking shit.

Here is a sample of the subjects upon which we have ruminated in between bouts of laughter generated by the comic attempts of our band of merry men to catch waves without being impaled on coral.

1. If you hadn’t met your wife and you could have married anyone in Australia, who would it have been? Delvene Delaney. Unanimous.

2. The death of irreverent humour in Australia. We think it was when The Chaser got banished from TV after their Make A Wish skit in which they gave a sick kid a stick.

3. The Queenslanders among us reminisced about how we never wore shoes to primary school. This all changed when Bata Scouts came on the market, complete with a compass in the heel and animal tracks on the sole. You had to have a pair, the same way kids have to have a smart phone today. It was marketing genius.

4. If we were the parents of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th woman who was allegedly raped by Harvey Weinstein, how pissed off we would be that the first alleged victim chose not to report it to police, given that as far as we know rape is a crime in the US and it would have stopped that grub in his tracks and saved all those women from the same fate.

5. What are the five worst songs ever made in Australia? We could only agree on one, Shaddup Your Face by Joe Dolce, although there was consensus that something by John Farnham should be in there.

6. Why do really rich people build such stupidly huge houses? Yes Chris Hemsworth, we were talking about you. Loved your work in Rush but.

7. Men who start second families in middle age. WTF. It’s a peculiar madness.

8. If footballers are supposed to be role models, western civilisation is in serious trouble.