Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is someone who wants to be liked even more than respected. He wants to be seen by Australians as one of them, a bloke’s bloke, one of the lads. In politician-speak, authentic.

Australia is different these days: it’s now a woman’s world, and an increasingly puritan and humourless society, in which many voters would not even have understood Osborne and Albanese’s humour, let alone appreciated it

That’s the only explanation for Albanese choosing to invite a ribald Australian podcaster, Nikki Osborne, to his official residence for a boisterous sit-down chat that has gone globally viral, for all the wrong reasons.

Osborne is an ‘actress and comedienne’ who’s dabbled in Australian breakfast FM radio, which doesn’t hesitate to be lewd and crude in attracting listeners. She has a podcast caricature persona she calls Bush Barbie, dressing like the late Steve Irwin but with short shorts showing much more leg. In whisky-fuelled conversations, Osborne has a knack for drawing her subjects into saying things more sober heads might avoid.

So it was with Albanese. Osborne initially didn’t offer Albanese a drink, instead the prime minister gave Bush Barbie a double measure of whisky. Saying ‘I got two fingers from the Prime Minister’ should have put Albanese on his guard, but he dived straight into an interview trap.

In the biggest viral clip from the interview, Albanese allowed himself to play a ‘shag, date, marry’ game. Given the choice of the ‘Singing Budgie’ Kylie Minogue, and Australian actresses Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore, the Prime Minister initially demurred, pointing out he is a recently remarried man. When Osborne then asked who he would choose if his marriage went ‘tits up, let’s just pretend’, Albanese confessed, ‘Kylie. Clearly’. Osborne closed in. ‘So you’d marry Kylie, shag her and date her?’, she asked. ‘All of the above’, Albanese responded, oblivious to how it would look to the wider media, and especially to women watching – let alone Minogue herself.

That wasn’t the only nugget from the interview. Australians now know their Prime Minister has an active sex life, and that he sees a win by his beloved rugby league team, South Sydney, as an ‘aphrodisiac’.

Then there was Albanese’s reference to Japan’s first woman Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi. Asked about unusual gifts he’s received from world leaders, Albanese mentioned that on her recent Australian visit, Takaichi gave him a Royal Melon. ‘She smuggled it?’, snickered Osborne. ‘I’ve got a couple of melons’, Albanese imagined Takaichi saying to Australian customs officials, illustrated by chest-jiggling hand gestures. ‘She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson’, Osborne responded, capping the joke.

How such humour will be received in face-obsessed Japan is uncertain, but from what we’ve seen of drum-playing, self-confessed ‘metalhead’ Takaichi, it’s likely that Japanese-Australian relations will survive.

It certainly was not in the best possible taste, but the full interview, available on YouTube, actually is entertaining and funny in its way. There was a real rapport between Osborne and the Prime Minister, and Albanese not only responded wittily, but demonstrated a likeable self-deprecation. But the more comfortable and relaxed Albanese became, the deeper the hole he dug for himself.

As soon as the Bush Barbie encounter started streaming, opposition politicians and the progressive commentariat started screaming. Albanese’s Minogue comments, especially, led to the most outrage, especially from feminist commentors used to thinking the politically-correct Labor Prime Minister is one of them.

Typical was Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Jacqueline Maley. ‘It was a looser style of interview, of the sort designed to showcase a politician’s relatability. Is this relatable? Not to a feminist scold like me. It’s just weary confirmation that not much has changed as we would like to think.’ she wrote, censoriously. Maley was not alone: women’s rights advocates from across the ideological spectrum similarly condemned Albanese’s crass insensitivity.

Such was the outcry that Albanese issued a one-sentence press statement on Monday. ‘I apologise unequivocally for the comments’ it said, as Albanese jetted out for meetings with South Pacific leaders.

Australia’s political culture is much more informal than in Britain or even the United States. Long-serving prime minister John Howard loved live talk radio; Anthony Albanese is no stranger to lowbrow FM radio interviews and, latterly, podcasts like Osborne’s, which has 152,000 followers and millions of views.

But this time, Albanese badly misread his target audience. The Aussie pub-style ‘one of the blokes’ humour may have gone down a treat in the 1970s ‘ocker’ Australia typified by Paul Hogan and Barry McKenzie. Australia is different these days: it’s now a woman’s world, and an increasingly puritan and humourless society, in which many voters would not even have understood Osborne and Albanese’s humour, let alone appreciated it.

It’s not the first time Albanese fell into a podcast trap. Several months ago, he was asked similar rapid-fire questions, including one about sexual abuse victim and former Australian of the Year, but latterly left-wing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine firebrand activist, Grace Tame. ‘Difficult’, he described her as, only to be labelled misogynist by Tame and her outraged supporters.

This Bush Barbie episode illustrates how fine a line any prime minister must walk between appearing as a dignified statesman and an ordinary person. Albanese’s unintentional misadventure this week is a lesson to political leaders everywhere that voters want the former far more than the latter, and that maintaining dignity in high office matters.

Ironically, in Osborne’s podcast Albanese himself recognised this. When asked whether he thought Australia’s opposition leader is a ‘blue knob’, Albanese replied, ‘I’ve thought all sorts of things. It’s best not to say some things… some things are best unsaid’. If only he’d taken his own advice.