Good morning, Anthony, take a seat. What I'm about to tell you might come as a shock.

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First, you're not cool. Second, you never will be. And, third, we don't want or need you to be. In fact, we'd all be better off if you stopped trying to act cool. You would be too.

Look at where it's got you and your colleagues this week. Instead of the clear focus on the important issues like the economy, gambling reform, AI, housing and bird flu, the whole country is talking about melons.

Why? Because you or your media advisers thought it was a good idea for you to appear on a silly podcast hosted by Nikki Osborne, a comedian known for her sexual innuendo and ditziness.

You got burnt when it first aired for playing the boof-headed parlour game Date, Shag or Marry and nominating Kylie Minogue.

Weeks later, you're under fire again for comments about the gift of crown melons from the Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi when she visited in May. While you might have thought it a good idea to appear on the podcast to get you in front of a different audience, you ended up looking and sounding like an aged and bespectacled Benny Hill. More creepy than cool.

All week, your colleagues have had to defend you, claiming the "conversation" had been misrepresented, which it may well have been. Oxygen has been sucked from other, more important stories as your political opponents have made a mountain out of melons.

Melongate won't go away. Even that seasoned planter box plonker Barnaby Joyce is seizing the high moral ground over it, despite the Japanese government insisting there's nothing to see here, that it's all sensationalist reporting, which most of it is. A storm in a D-cup.

You only have yourself to blame, Anthony.

It was a lapse in judgment to appear on the podcast, just as it was a mistake to attend Kyle Sandilands' lavish wedding in 2023, and wrongfooted to participate in a word association game at the Future Victoria conference in February this year. Remember the outcry when you labelled Grace Tame "difficult"?

We can forgive the occasional Radio Birdman and Joy Division T-shirts and the tips for Triple J's Hottest 100. For a bloke in his 60s, they're more quaint than cool. But when you wander into traps like the Bush Deep podcast, it's an entirely different matter.

Yes, the outrage is largely confected and the opposition, desperate for a gotcha win, is conflating the issue. But in the very week parliament returns from the winter recess, with so much important stuff to talk about, this almighty distraction is........

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