IN America they like to shake up their televised debates by inviting participants to roam the stage with mics, cabaret singer style, or have them cosy up to each other, mano-a-mano, elbow to elbow, around a table.

Viewers in Scotland (and elsewhere in the UK) were treated last night to a more old school format of blokes standing behind lecterns in a grand hall, with only one, the First Minister, making occasional sashays out on to the floor. Strictly Come Dancing this was not.

From the off, the BBC was keen to assert its own visual style. STV had gone for Braveheart blue as a backdrop, so the BBC opted for a regal purple, though corporation types would probably call it heather. Whatever, the lava lamp effect would have had many reaching for the Pepto-Bismol.

Given reported BBC plans for two different programmes on referendum night - one hosted by Huw Edwards, the other by Glenn Campbell - one did wonder if someone would be airlifted in from London, but no such outrage occurred.

Apart from choosing a tie more suited to a state funeral than a verbal square go, the BBC Scotland man had a good night, even if his light touch moderation did occasionally bring the debate close to Sturgeon-Lamont stairheid rammy territory.

Taking its cue from the setting, the STV debate in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland theatre had something of the am-dram, Good Old Days about it. The BBC event, held in the central hall of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, felt part Question Time, part school assembly, with the echo so bad that at times the debate sounded like two men having a shouting match in a public toilet.

Indeed, after an initial introductory shot of the museum one would hardly know the event was being held in that hallowed second home of many a Glaswegian child. What, no glimpse of the elephant, a dinosaur or even a cheeky Ming vase?

Perhaps the BBC did not fancy the complaints from paranoid spin doctors concerned about negative optics, or whatever the latest jargon is from Veep.

Occasionally the cameras would catch a glimpse of the building's Spanish baroque interior, but last night was about arguments rather than architecture, who had the keys to the Guggenheim of assertion, and whose contentions were a municipal bus garage of guff.

That is for the voters to decide; barring both leaders saying yes to another head to head - why is there not one a week from now till polling day? - the debate broadcasters have now done their bit.