Blame games erupt as Wagatha Christie and Ferrygate vie for most bizarre entertainment

While Rebekah Vardy battled tearfully to convince the Wagatha Christie jury – reams of text exchanges evaporating into thin air, a mobile phone sinking like a latter-day Excalibur beneath the chilly waters of the North Sea – doings in Holyrood took an equally bizarre turn.

The SNP had so far elected to chuck former minister Derek Mackay under the ferry – maintaining he was solely responsible for awarding the botched Calmac deal thought to have wasted a quarter of a billion pounds of public money. Yet a missing email had mysteriously resurfaced, perhaps from down the back of the sofa or the same Davy Jones’s locker where the fateful phone and texts currently reside – though not quite in time for the local elections. It apparently revealed that deputy leader John Swinney had given a green light to the proposal.

Awks! as Rebekah might have ejaculated. Since the SNP had neglected to black out the redacted bits fully when they published the document, it had also accidentally divulged internal fears that the contract itself might be “unlawful”.

What a tangled web we weave! If the ferries’ saga had so far resembled an unfortunate breeze revealing a kilted Scotsman’s underpinnings, its latest twist seemed closer to said Scot deliberately standing in a wind tunnel and acting horrified to find his private parts exposed.

Swinney’s presence at First Ministers’ questions simply ramped up the undiluted cringe factor. There he sat, hapless and mute beside Nicola Sturgeon, while impassioned debates raged about his and his party’s probity.

The Scottish Tory and Labour leaders Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar were vying to snatch the “Coleen Rooney Vindicated Sleuth” Prize – as both performed a sort of masculine, Holyroodian take on Miss Marple outing the killer over a glass of sherry at the vicarage. “Operation ‘blame Derek Mackay’ has a fatal flaw”, gloated Ross. “Honest John’s hands are all over this dodgy deal!”

Brandishing the redacts, he painted a picture of a party that couldn’t organise a p*** up in the proverbial, or a cover-up in an email chain. The full text, he added, could be read merely by inserting it into a Word file. “The SNP’S secret Scotland foiled by copy and paste!” When Ross asked whether Swinney himself could be grilled by the Scottish Parliament later that day, the First Minister fumed. “It’s not my job to help out desperate Douglas Ross, frankly, Presiding Officer.”

Sarwar instantly demanded that the Government release the results of a probe into bullying claims against one of Sturgeon’s former ministers, Fergus Ewing. This the First Minister declined on Computer Says No grounds, citing “very considerable legal data protection issues”. But no one was asking for confidential details, Sarwar insisted, merely the probe’s outcome.

In a volcanic rant he accused the First Minister of presiding over “secrecy and cover-ups” encompassing everything from allegations against ministers to the awarding of public contracts, even the deaths of children in hospital. It may have lacked the surrealism of Wagatha Christie, but for a moment, Teflon Nicola looked as if she was coming unstuck.

‘It lacked the surrealism of Wagatha Christie, but ... Teflon Nicola looked as if she was coming unstuck’