IT was less a trip down memory lane, more an anthem for doomed youth at First Minister's Questions, as Johann Lamont teased Alex Salmond about his Westminster salad days, that long lost age when you might actually have seen him with a salad.

She reminded him how, in 1988, "a young nationalist rogue" was bounced out the Commons for interrupting Nigel Lawson's budget as the then Tory chancellor cut corporation tax.

Whatever happened to that cherubic scamp, his wode-tinted cheeks tingling with principled mischief, the Labour leader wondered.

And who, she implied, was this curry-sculpted codger with the same name who wants to cut 3p off corporation tax come hell or high water?

Could they by any chance be related?

Channelling some of the old rage, the FM laid into Ed Balls and Labour UK for accepting Tory welfare cuts and Tory spending plans.

Independence would bring the "social justice" denied to Scots by Westminster, he puffed.

But if the UK's welfare system was so monstrous, why did Salmond want to keep it after independence, asked Lamont, citing this week's SNP government report on welfare.

What with sharing the pound, the armed forces, the Queen and now welfare, "Has the First Minister lost his mojo on independence?"

As gentlefolk in the gallery swooned at mention of the FM's mojo, SNP backbenchers barked their displeasure, putting up the sonic equivalent of a beachtowel to spare their leader's blushes.

But Lamont was ready.

Perhaps they "might want to set up a break-away group, SNP for independence", she quipped.

It was a good one-liner, but one of too many rootless gags in search of a theme from her.

Tory Ruth Davidson and LibDem Willie Rennie had more impact, and unsettled Salmond, by focusing on problems in the NHS and the self-destructing Scottish Police Authority.

It was then left to Independent Margo MacDonald to re-lower the tone by asking on a point of order if "mojo" was parliamentary language.

The FM's mojo, opined Deputy Presiding Officer John Scott, was not a point of order but a "minor matter". So now you know.