It’s not usually the time for the star of the show to make remarks denigrating women’s sport, but that is the path Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas apparently chose to take on Saturday.

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The 52-year-old Zempilas has spent almost three decades in sports media and also won an election in October 2020 to become Lord Mayor of the city in which he was born.

So you would hope he would understand one of the first rules of broadcast journalism, that the microphone is nearly always on.

As he prepared for the press conference to begin – which remarkably was arranged to announce his intention to seek preselection for a seat in state politics with the Liberal Party – Zempilas opted to engage in some chit chat with some of those gathered, likely journalists.

You can judge for yourself, but it appeared Zempilas had a prepared question ready to go, along with what he considered a punchline to follow.

“Tennis is on tonight, isn’t it?” Zempilas asks to a man that can’t be seen in the clip.

“Ah, yeah, the female final,” the man replies.

Before the man has finished replying, Zempilas has already dropped his head to demonstrate his disappointment at the response before firing back: “It’s a reserves game, then.”

Zempilas, who had a brief stint playing in the West Australian Football League and spent much of his career covering footy, is obviously comparing the women’s final to a secondary match, opposed to the main event of men’s tennis.

He tries to clarify what he means by adding “I say that having been there obviously”, possibly an odd, not-so-humble brag about his broadcast career with the Seven Network, who used to hold the rights to the Australian Open.

Then comes the actual funny part of the clip.

As Zempilas is still talking, he is clearly informed by a crew member that his microphone is on and he’s being heard.

“OK, all right,” he says quickly and confidently before it all dawns on him what’s happened.

The father of three, including two girls, is last seen staring intently into the void wondering exactly what the fallout to his comments might be, we assume.

Zempilas has since put out a long tweet attempting to explain his side of the story stating the conversation “is being reported totally incorrectly”.

He goes on to stress the conversation was referring to reading the news as being the reserves game, not the women’s final in the tennis.

The responses to that have naturally been swift.

“You gotta own it,” is one reply.

“Basil we all saw the video stop blatantly gaslighting us we saw exactly how you reacted when you were told the mic was on,” wrote another.

“That’s more spin than Shane Warne,” wrote a third.

“Release the entire conversation then chief,” suggested another.

The responses to the initial video clip were also quick and brutal towards the Lord Mayor.

Among the comments is a consistent suggestion his state political career might be lasting about as long as some other infamous sports identities, including Mal Meninga and Billy Brownless.

“What a creep,” was one comment on X, formerly Twitter. “Notice the immediate change of facial expression the minute he knew he was on the mic.”

“Reckon his daughters are gonna be pretty proud & happy when they see this,” wrote another.

“Who was he trying to impress with a comment like that, it wasn’t even remotely funny and it showed his true feelings about women in sport,” questioned another. “He should never commentate on any sport ever again.”

“Just broke Mal Meninga’s record!” added a fourth.

Rugby league legend Meninga didn’t get through a press conference to announce his move into politics before he walked out, while Brownless infamously didn’t quite get that far.

For a man that has covered sports news for more than half his life, Zempilas is no stranger to making the odd headline himself.

Last month, a week after his city was criticised for not turning up for the first cricket Test match of the summer between Australia and Pakistan, Zempilas took aim at the Boxing Day Test crowd in Melbourne.

The official crowd figure for the opening day of the second Test at the MCG was 62,167, the second highest opening day crowd for a Test between Australia and Pakistan at the venue.

It’s also more than the combined attendance 59,125 across the four days of action in Perth.

But Zempilas thought it was a poor Boxing Day crowd, despite the standard of the opponent and wet weather affecting Melbourne.

He tweeted: “Hmmmm. What’s their excuse? Not like you can go to the beach?”

Zempilas’ tweet didn’t go down too well.

6News’ Leonardo Puglisi replied: “60K+ showed up when we all knew it would be raining – more than the entire 4 day Perth test.”

Another person said: “More people turned up to the MCG with heavy rain forecast than can fit in to Optus Stadium. Also more people at Day 1 than attended the entire four days of the Perth test.”

Another commented: “That Perth chip on your shoulder is really weighing you down Basil.”

Zempilas then doubled down on his criticism a couple of days later.

“Bugger the Vics I say. Bugger the rest of them as well,” he told 6PR Radio.

“All of this came out of a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun at the Victorians for all going home when it started raining. And I looked up at the MCG, virtually empty and said, ‘what’s their excuse? It’s not as if they can go to the beach’.

“That was of course relating to our own crowds at our own Test match.

“Yes, the Vics did have more on one day, the opening day of the Boxing Day Test than we had for our entire Test match, but then again … if our Test match started on Boxing Day, a public holiday, I reckon we’d get a fair crowd as well.”