Do you speak Kath & Kim? Yes, it’s an Aussie sitcom, but it’s also a language. If you’re fluent, you will call your lounge the “good room”, declare after a slap-up meal that you’re “full up to pussy’s bow” and wash that meal down with a glass of Cardonnay (insisting that the “h” is silent).

Once hooked, you may find yourself employing Kath & Kim vocabulary for life – and hoping that the life in question turns out to be “effluent”.

First aired in 2002, Kath & Kim became one of Australia’s highest-rated series, and reached the UK in 2005 via BBC Two, picking up an ever-growing cult audience. If you knew, you knew.

Set in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Fountain Lakes, it stars the show’s co-creator Jane Turner as Kath Day, a “foxy lady” with the frizziest of perms (her “clowning glory”) and disastrous taste in chunky knits and leisurewear. She shares that taste with Kel Knight (Glenn Robbins), purveyor of fine meats, to whom she is soon wed, becoming Kath Day-Knight in the process.

The sole barrier to marital bliss is Kath’s grown-up daughter, Kim (the other co-creator, Gina Riley), probably the most self-centred character ever to grace a TV screen. Kim is a self-­proclaimed “hornbag” whose trademark is a muffin top partnered with visible G-string. When not engaged in flicking her hair or squirting canned cream directly into her potty mouth, Kimmy is found yelling at her ­downtrodden on-off husband, Brett (Peter Rowsthorn), and her ­“second best friend”, Sharon (Magda Szubanski), a short, wide tomboy with ­pudding-bowl haircut who excels at all sports but is never free of lumps, bumps and carbuncles.

Put that cast together and you get 32 side-splitting episodes over four series, including what some see as as the funniest ever TV wedding: Kath, the bride, breaks most of her bones and Kim is felled by the amorous advances of the feisty horse that pulls the pumpkin wedding carriage.

As the show grew in popularity, celebrities clamoured to be guest stars, with a roll call of Aussie royalty (Barry Humphries, Kylie Minogue, Shane Warne, Eric Bana, Rachel Griffiths) joined by Matt Lucas and Richard E Grant from these shores. Canada’s Michael Bublé also signed up, describing his screen flirtation with Kath – and corresponding argy-bargy with a jealous Kel – as a career highlight.

What really set Kath & Kim apart, though, was the way it revelled in wordplay; even the title is a play on “kith and kin”. A typical gag has Kath bustling round her kitchen while discussing her wedding plans. She insists she “can’t elope” just as we see her open the fridge door and bring out a… cantaloupe. Then there’s the episode where Kath instructs Kim to order a statue of “little baby Jesus” as a party centrepiece. What turns up is an abomination of shiny red globes on cocktail sticks – little baby cheeses!

Barry Humphries said of the show: “It gives the impression of being  improvised but in fact it’s very finely crafted.” And former Australian PM Julia Gillard was also a fan, citing Kath as an inspiration.

Though the show finished in 2012, it never seems to have left our screens. It’s now on Netflix, but the prospect of more Kath & Kim seems slim, especially since the Melbourne house it was filmed in was demolished in 2022.

So we may never again hear Kath announce: “I’ve got one word to say to you…” before blurting out several. Never see Kel inventing his latest commemorative sausage. Never witness Kim getting “literally legless”.

Yet Kath & Kim, with its mile-a-minute wordplay, is made for repeat viewing (this writer is a fourth-timer). It’s very much love it or hate it, and some people just don’t get it. But if you’ve never seen it and you are susceptible, you’re in for a treat.

Forget the oft-cited idea that we’re laughing with the characters. We laugh at Kath, Kim, Kel, Sharon and Brett. And they’re hilarious.