It was a funny old FMQs today, with half the contributors deputising for someone else.

LibDem Alison McInnes stood in for leader Willie Rennie, who is recovering from spinal surgery. Apparently, and in a first for his party, he now has one.

Meanwhile Labour's Jackie Baillie took the place of Johann Lamont, who suffers from another common back problem at Holyrood, multiple stab wounds.

Finally, there was Alex Salmond understudying for the true power in the land, Nicola Sturgeon.

As is traditional with Labour slayings, Ms Baillie opened with some breathtakingly fake praise for the ex-leader she reportedly knifed.

Ms Lamont (good riddance) had been a passionate and committed public servant, she sniffed, dabbing away tears with a bloodied stiletto.

The First Minister, who has a soft spot for useless opponents, was rather more convincing.

Ms Lamont, he said, was spirited, dedicated and should continue in public life (fingers crossed).

Then it was down to business and the NHS, the subject of a grim new Audit Scotland report. Amid the squeezed budgets and missed targets, did the FM "have any plan at all to deal with the growing crisis in the NHS?" asked Ms Baillie.

Mr Salmond blamed Westminster austerity. Indeed, page 32 of the report stated: "Reductions in spending at a UK level will affect the level of funding available for Scotland. The Scottish Government will need to plan for health spending within an overall, reducing budget."

Just what the SNP plan was, he neglected to say.

Ms Baillie accused him of being in "absolute denial" about the problems on the wards, such as the half million days lost to delayed discharges.

At the mention of bed blocking, Ms Sturgeon, who has waited years to inherit the Bute House four-poster, gave the FM an inscrutable look.

Mr Salmond dismissed Ms Baillie by saying there were 8800 more NHS staff under the SNP and the situation would be worse if Labour were in power.

He then flourished a random news story in which she had denied there was disunity in Labour or that its MPs and MSPs were feuding.

"Any politician with the gall to make that argument can't be trusted on the Labour Party on the finances of the NHS," he crowed.

Tory leader Ruth Davidson went on planes. She'd have been better advised to board one.

Her gambit was to ask about a delayed report into the future of state-owned Prestwick Airport. Just when would it be published? she asked, hoping for an evasive answer.

But the FM robbed her of a follow-up gloat by saying it would be out "within my remaining term of office", meaning just a few days.

He then proceeded to lecture Ms Davidson on the history of last year's public buyout, saying a private bidder had pulled out because of the impact of air passenger duty (APD) on Prestwick, a tax set by Westminster which the SNP would gladly scrap.

Prestwick had a future, he insisted, but it would be far better if it didn't have "its hands tied behind its back by the imposition of the outrageous APD and its impact on carriers".

Reeling from that biff on the nose-cone, Ms Davidson went into a tailspin, burbling about the report being "a fudge...that kicks the can down the road" and other assorted cliches.

His opponent in the crosshairs, Mr Salmond dive-bombed and opened up the cannons. If the state hadn't stepped in, thousands of people would have been out of work, he said.

Meanwhile the Tories were looking to spend up to £60bn on a new runway or airport for London.

Yet when the FM suggested cutting APD in Scotland to help relieve pressure on London airports, he was told that was "a distortion of competition".

Locked on target and absolutely furious, he fumed: "Ruth Davidson and her party live in a world where spending £60bn on infrastructure in the south of England is not a distortion of competition, but allowing airports like Prestwick to survive and prosper by having a competitive rate of APD somehow is. That is the topsy-turvy world of London-bias that the Conservative party have placed on Scotland!"

Staggering from the wreckage of her reputation, how Ms Davidson must have wished Murdo Fraser had been deputising for her too.