A Holyrood colleague - from the Sun, since you ask - likened Alex Salmond's demeanour at the publication of the GERS statistics on Wednesday to the description by Samuel Pepys of Major General Thomas Harrison as he was about to be hung, drawn and quartered: "He was looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition."

So what would be the Salmond demeanour for the inevitable re-run at First Minister's Questions? Much the same, if truth be told, cheerful with a stiff measure of defiance, a bit like the old Roundhead in 1660.

It is said that once he'd been hanged for a bit, and having had his "privy members" cut off and burned before his eyes, and with his entrails hanging out, the Major General felt a bit provoked and took a swing at the executioner, prompting his swift beheading.

The most out-of-hand things get these days is an STV debate or a bit of a dressing down from Tricia Marwick.

There was a grim inevitability about FMQs, a Cheltenham-week racing certainty that it was going to be a re-run of the previous day.

Oh, how our hearts sank as the SNP got their retaliation in first with a related patsy question - from James Dornan to John Swinney regarding Standard & Poor's recent positive assessment of the Scots economy. We knew it was a patsy question because the Finance Secretary effectively said so, calling it a "fair and dispassionate point".

We were, it would be fair to say, less than thunderstruck, when Johann Lamont opened up on the GERS figures - a £12bn deficit, equivalent to the entire NHS budget, a £4bn fall in oil revenue, the size of the whole budget for schools, the need for hiked taxes or slashed spending.

But then, to even less surprise, came the Salmond response, identical to the day before, highlighting that if the figures were taken over a five-year period, they still fit the Nationalist scenario with Scotland being £8bn better off over the period relative to the UK, equivalent to £1600 for every adult and child in the country.

By now Lamont was getting her dander up. "How do you maintain schools when you lose your whole budget? Are you relaxed at having a £4bn loss? I'm not even asking difficult questions like the currency, the groat, the bawbee or whatever."

It's probably never a great idea for a Scots politician to use mocking terms such as the groat or bawbee. That's our job in the meedja.

Salmond interpreted it thus: "Telling Scots we are too poor will get you a giant raspberry."

And so it went on. Ruth Davidson went on GERS. Willie Rennie went on GERS. This year's poor show kept getting the response that measured over years produced a different picture.

Sod the "broad shoulders" of the UK, Salmond said: "How can oil be a huge advantage for the UK but a huge burden for Scotland?"

By the time Rennie stepped up for round three we were losing the will to live. It was going to take burned privy members or ripped out entrails for us to sit up and take notice.

Sadly, none of this was forthcoming and in any case Ms Marwick would probably have ruled it out of order.