IT was, as Speaker Bercow noted, "a wall of noise".
But before we got to the ritual up yours, yahboo sucks, hand-to-hand combat, there was a brief moment of shared camaraderie between Red Ed and Blue Dave thanks to that surly Scot turned Great Briton Sir Andrew Murray.
After the PM congratulated Andy on becoming the first "British player" in 77 years to win Wimbledon, there were some quizzical looks from Labour's female frontbenchers.
It was left to Ed to point out how, in his praise for the Scots tennis champion, Andy's fantastic achievement had followed that of Virgina Wade's 36 years ago.
The crimson tide arrived early as Ed asked how much hedge funds had given the Tories. Dave, veins throbbing in his forehead, blasted that every Conservative donation was published but the real scandal was union vote-fixing in Falkirk. As the barracking continued, the PM said: "They're paid to shout and they're doing nothing about it."
Ed, noting how the Tory headboy had not answered his question – the answer was £25m – he asked if it was a coincidence the Chancellor gave those nice hedge funds a not insignificant £145m tax cut in the budget.
Not answering the question again – perhaps it should be renamed Prime Minister's Non-Answers – Dave declared top taxes were higher under this Government than the last Labour one. Seeking the high moral ground – always tricky – Dave said donations to Labour bought votes at conference, candidates and the leader .
The chief comrade, standing on his tip toes, sought to grab that high moral ground, declaring how the difference was that Labour was funded by donations of 6p a week from ordinary people against a party funded by a few millionaires at the top.
After the Speaker intervened yet again, Dave said the reality was £8m from Unite, £4m from GMB and £4m from Unison. "They bought the policies, they bought the candidates and they bought the leader."
In a final hurrah, Ed challenged Dave to cap donations at £5000 a year but the PM said this would imply the public funding parties and he did not want a trade union scandal meaning "every taxpayer in the country paying for Labour", saying trade unions owned Labour "lock, stock and block vote".
But the Labour leader was not done and responded by accusing the PM of "ducking reform" and blasted, to Labour cheers, that the Tories were "owned by a few millionaires at the top of society".
After last week's drubbing, Ed had found redemption on party funding but after a heated rally that would have done Andy Murray proud it was time for everyone to retire to a darkened room with a cool drink.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article