Alex Johnstone is a politician who doesn’t shy away from giving a quote to journalists but, it is fair to say, he has never been described as a Shakespearean figure within Holyrood.
Not the case, argued the First Minister. He is in fact “King Leer”.
In what was perhaps the most bizarre distraction technique ever used in the Scottish Parliament’s debating chamber, Nicola Sturgeon accused the MSP who will now surely be known as “the beast of the north east” of “leering at me in that strange way”.
One female politician reckoned such a description was unfair. “He’s just a bit glaikit,” she said afterwards.
Damned with faint praise or what?
Urged by Conservative Murdo Fraser to “join us and rule out higher taxes on families and businesses” on the back of Labour’s plans to make middle earners pay more to restore tax credits, Ms Sturgeon bought time to “recover my composure”.
Amidst the guffawing, no answer was forthcoming.
A theme was developing, even as the sensible stuff was debated.
To cut or not to cut, that was the question twice from Kezia Dugdale, once from Jackie Baillie and an inaudible number of times from Neil Findlay, heckling from the backbenches in his usual spirited manner.
No answer arrived from the First Minister.
SNP ministers will wait and see what the Chancellor outlines in his Autumn Statement before putting forward costed and serious plans.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” would seem to be the Scottish Government’s attitude when it comes to deciding whether or not to mitigate tax credits.
The days do indeed creep slowly along until we find out how big George Osborne’s U-turn on tax credits is going to be.
And every day that’s already happened has taken us seemingly further away from an answer from the SNP.
It was all chaotic, all very noisy and quite good fun.
The Romeo and Juliet love-in of the Trident debate could not have been further away.
On bonfire night, it was less the revolutionary spirit of Guy Fawkes and more the madness of Macbeth which seemed to possess our elected representatives.