Holyrood sketch: If there is a joke with the punch line Clostridium Difficile I don't want to hear it. Contrary to all those edgy comedians, some things just aren't funny. The fact can put a crimp in your basic jolly sketch.

If there is a joke with the punch line Clostridium Difficile I don't want to hear it. Contrary to all those edgy comedians, some things just aren't funny. The fact can put a crimp in your basic jolly sketch.

How are members of Jings - the Junior International Guild of Sketchifiers - supposed to get by when politicians persist in being responsible rather than merely ridiculous? How can you put in an honest day's mockery when there's a public health crisis going on?

There are two answers. First, don't even try. Second, wait for Nicol Stephen to speak. In fact, even the Liberal leader let us down.

Sleep apnoea isn't funny either, nor is waiting a year to attend a clinic. But as Alex Salmond was quick (none quicker) to say: "As the former deputy first minister well knows, such services are not included in the waiting list guarantees and never have been included in the waiting list guarantees".

It was that kind of day. Mr Stephen's attack over waiting times was at best a grumble over a minor (though not for sufferers) aspect of NHS work. Worse, if you want to be cruel - and why not? - the Liberal was grumbling over a problem he had failed to address when he had the chance.

There was a lot of that. For the Tories, Annabel Goldie was in crime-busting mode, yet again. The Blue Streak laid into summary justice reforms. Or as she put it: "The Scottish National Party's relentless drive to empty our jails".

That is, of course, a Bad Thing. In Ms Goldie's world an empty clink - ours are stuffed to bursting - would count as an offence against nature. But she can do this stuff in her sleep. And sometimes in mine.

"Would the First Minister agree," she asked, knowing the answer full well, "that we need to get back to our criminal justice system being there to deter, to punish and protect? And does he agree we need to get our criminal justice system out of the dock and get criminals back into the dock?"

The Tories, Mr Salmond reminded us, did not build a single prison in 17 years. They created the system of automatic early release that so vexes Ms Goldie. And those liable to do a runner from open prison were far more common when her party was in charge.

For Labour, Liberals and the Tories alike, this is a recurring problem. Can you damn the SNP administration just by asking "Why aren't you doing all the things we somehow forgot to do?" Devastating it is not.

Prior to this, Wendy Alexander had at least offered the sort of intervention calculated to knock the jocularity out of any sketch. Mr Salmond tried to suggest that she might be trying to wring political advantage out of the horrors at Vale of Leven Hospital, but his heart wasn't in it.

Ms Alexander wanted to know why there had been an apparent delay between the C Diff outbreak and an investigation of its causes. She also wanted to know whether they now propose to hold an independent inquiry.

The First Minister replied that the "immediate priority" had been to get the outbreak under control. He did not, however, rule out an inquiry.

All very sensible; all entirely reasonable. A conspiracy against sketches, I call it.