It was the highly-anticipated Challenger's Debate which was meant to be a showdown between five political leaders, including Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon.

It was bound to be so explosive that David Cameron refused to show up.

And yet at the start the event resembled the typical weekly Thursday night episode of the BBC's Question Time.

Five people as part of a panel, with the BBC's David Dimbleby in the middle trying to keep them in line.

There was also quite a bit of hammy staginess going on. At one point after Ed Miliband mentioned a Ukip policy Mr Farage held up his hand to the audience as if holding back the hordes about to swarm the stage in defence of the eurosceptics.

No one jumped from their seat. But then the debate burst into life. It was not long before the Green leader Natalie Bennett shouted at Ed Miliband "I think it is my turn to come in now!".

It was noticeable that, as predicted within 20 minutes the leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens were joining together to tackle the Labour leader.

Mr Farage, on the far right of the panel, was playing his own game entirely. Which appeared to be to try to be as controversial and attention hogging as possible, with a few lines designed to resonate with voters thrown in.

In an unusual move the Ukip leader decided quite early on to attack the studio audience. First he claimed they were not representative of the public a large, which earned him some boos from the audience and a stern rebuke from Dimbleby, who pointed out they had been chosen by an independent company to be a wide cross section.

Mr Farage then changed tack, claiming that the people in front of him were not the real audience, that was the viewers at home. Perhaps unsurprisingly this earned him a louder boo.

Like the studio audience, Mr Farge was still unhappy.

The other political leaders were ganging up on him,he said.

He accused them of "abusing" Ukip because they did not like it telling the truth.

But he faced was attached over that argument by Ms Wood. She hit back that he was the abuser - abusing immigrants and people with HIV. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon hit out at the Ukip leader as well, claiming he would blame anything on immigrants.

But the main battle of the night was between the Labour and the SNP leaders.

Mr Miliband shook his head as Ms Sturgeon offered to help him get into power if he could prove that he was "better" than the Tories.

He hit back accusing her of still plotting to break up the UK and wanting to put a £7bn black hole in Scotland's finances through full fiscal autonomy.

In her attack, Ms Sturgeon was helped by the "progressive alliance" of the three female leaders. At one point as Mr Miliband described his plan for the country as fairer and better, Green leader Natalie Bennett appeared to rather pointedly roll her eyes.

There was also an interesting piece of 'alliance' between Labour and the SNP, however.

For her part Ms Sturgeon condemned as "disgraceful" the attacks on Mr Milliband from the Tories last week.

These accused the Labour leader of stabbing his brother in the back by standing for his party's top job. The Tory Defence Secretary forecast that the Labour leader would decide to abandon Trident and so "stab" the UK in the back.

For his part Mr Miliband also hit out at Mr Farage over comments made by a Ukip MEP who pretended to mistake a Muslim SNP minister for Abu Hamza.

Those who had snubbed the debate also caused their own controversy.

David Cameron had refused to take part - prompting accusations from Labour that he was "running scared".

Despite the no-show, however, the Tories were determined to muscle in on the action.

The party sent 'spinners' to the venue, to argue that Mr Cameron had won the debate, despite not showing up.

There was also a spat as the Lib Dems accused the Tories of effectively barring their man Nick Clegg from turning up.

In the spin room was a whole host of senior politicians whose parties were not taking part in the debate.

For the Tories there were cabinet ministers Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt.

For the Liberal Democrats there were also ministers, including interestingly a number of Scots, Danny Alexander and Jo Swinson.

Interestingly there was only one party leader who did not smile as they were introduced by the host David Dimbleby - and that was Nigel Farage.

But even his party was claiming they had won by the end.