It was manbags time. Biff, bate, pout. Double oooooh!

FIRST, an entertaining spot of manbags. The day began with Health Questions, the last 15 minutes given to topical matters when the House looks for some quick tennis between backbenchers and ministers.

John Bercow was requesting brevity. He does this so often, in such a formulaic fashion, that few MPs pay it much heed.

The Speaker called Greg Mulholland (Lib Dem, Leeds NW).

Gawd. Of all the Lib Dems in all the seats in all the world, as Bogart did not quite say in Casablanca. Mulholland! The man is not just a windbag – he is a galebag. It is hard to place one’s fingertip quite on why he is so irritating. Is it the droning voice, the tendency to blinking which projects indignation and naivety, or perhaps the sheer amount of time he consumes?

Whatever, this Lib Dem – one of the very few not to have been made a minister in the Coalition years, so we can deduce that he drove Cleggy mad, too – makes the House groan.

‘Brevity,’ said Bercow. Ha! You might as well ask a blue whale to do some knitting. Off went Mulholland, the morose voice sawing through the parliamentary air.

Health ministers petrified. Moss grew on the Hansard stenographers’ keyboards. Torpor gripped the gargoyles on the Palace of Westminster’s outer gutterings.

The RAF should drop loop recordings of Mulholland on IS fighters in the Middle East. Turbanned maniacs though they be, they’d soon come out with their hands in the air.

Speaker Bercow endured so much of a multi- clause Mulholland question about Duchenne muscular dystrophy and tuberous sclerosis – and snapped.

‘Order! It is a discourtesy to the House to be so long-winded.’

This, yes, from a Speaker who is himself a most verbose little oompa loompa.

Mr Mulholland, like many cham- pion bores, has a truculent streak. He spat out some inaudible insult and said his question was darn important. He was fed up. With that he stomped out of the Chamber. Ooooooh! Speaker Bercow: ‘ Don’t shake your head, mate. You were too long. Leave, that is fine. We can manage without you.’ Biff, bate, pout, moue. Double ooooooh!

AFTER such histrionics, even the Scots Nats in full, clucking crossness was going to be a disappointment. So it proved when we reached an urgent (and rather pointless) debate about ‘Evel’ – English Votes on English Laws.

Another Lib Dem, Alistair Carmichael (Orkney & Shetland) opened this debate. Nice chap, Carmichael, but he allowed himself to be interrupted too much and his content was overly technical.

He was complaining not just about the principle of English MPs having their own say on exclusively English matters but also about the complicated way the Government intends to do this. It proposes a change to the House’s standing orders. Soon we were into technical stuff about the Sewel Convention, the McKay Commission, the procedure committee, primary legislation, the justifiability of decisions made by the Speaker, the boundaries of judicial review, the Barnett formula, draft standing order changes, amendments thereto and much more.

On the Tory benches, Charles Walker (Broxbourne), a mildly anti-Cameroon Tory who runs the procedure committee, gossiped conspiratorially with Graham Brady (Altrincham & Sale W), a senior anti-Cameroon. Mr Walker then had what looked like a cross conversation with the Prime Minister’s parliamentary aide, Gavin Williamson (S Staffs).

At the Despatch Box, clunky Chris Grayling, Leader of the House, was mooing away about the need for fairness for English voters.

He was attacked by Labour’s Angela Eagle (Wallasey), who most unsportingly asked horribly detailed questions that Mr Grayling may barely have understood. Mr Brady laughed at Grayling.

The SNP benches, meanwhile, contained some 30 clucking bantams, all twitching their shoulders and flapping their wings – and laughing at the all-too mockable Grayling, who himself came close to losing his temper.

Telly announcers used to say: ‘Scottish viewers have their own programmes.’ Why ever should English voters not ‘have their own votes on their laws’? Only pedants and partisans could disagree.