FIRST Minister's Questions was running a two-for-one offer on potentates yesterday.
Observing serenely from the VIP box was the former Labour MP for Govan, now "governor of Punjab, His Excellency Mr Mohammad Sarwar".
While down below, slogging and snarling in the sawdust for his entertainment, a miserable Alex Salmond was baited over public service cuts.
They say nothing stings like a friend's success, so one can only imagine how the First Minister felt glancing up at his old Westminster mucker between bouts.
A palace, a security detail, and a population of 27million to lord it over - he must have been aching like Homer Simpson denied a donut.
Adding to the FM's agonies, Johann Lamont drew on her teaching career to accuse him of "displacement activity" when he refused four times to say if college student numbers had gone up or down under the SNP, and tried to talk about problems "south of the border" instead.
Cowering behind his desk lid, Mr Salmond insisted a rise in abstract full-time equivalent places was "a substantial achievement".
But given actual student numbers have fallen 100,000, or 29%, Heidie Lamont was unmoved.
"I hesitate to say this, but it feels as if a Scottish education was rather wasted on the First Minister," she sneered.
Came the sulky reply: "I'm sure Johann Lamont was an enormous loss to the education sector. The question is, was she an enormous gain to Scottish politics, and I don't think so."
Tory Ruth Davidson then acted the gadfly, nipping Mr Salmond over police counter closures. Even suggesting things might be imperfect was "quite disgraceful" and "an insult to the police service of Scotland," he harrumphed.
Again, he invoked the miasmic swamps "south of the border" for comparison, that hellscape of "less police stations, less police officers".
The press box grammarians bit their knuckles. "Fewer police stations, fewer officers," they muttered, wondering if the FM's education had indeed been wasted.
Afterwards, on his way to a potentate pow-wow with the FM, Mr Sarwar declared the proceedings "good fun". At least one of them enjoyed it.
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