Holyrood Sketch: Roll up, roll up for Wendo, the amazing one-woman circus act. Thrill as she performs a U-turn with double twist on the political high wire. Gasp as she spins on the trapeze, just avoiding an accidental slip that could make Scotland independent.

Roll up, roll up for Wendo, the amazing one-woman circus act.

Thrill as she performs a U-turn with double twist on the political high wire. Gasp as she spins on the trapeze, just avoiding an accidental slip that could make Scotland independent. Shudder as she fearlessly places her head in the jaws of fiasco. Scratch your head as you try to figure out what on earth she's playing at.

Holyrood's room P1.03 is not much like a circus tent, but yesterday's packed press conference promised to be the closest to exciting live entertainment the 30 gentlemen and one woman of the Holyrood press pack can get. Questions prepared, pencils sharpened, expectation a-quiver, we waited to see how she would explain her haphazard shift to gamble on an independence vote.

Twenty-five minutes later, we were not much the wiser. We asked the questions. She didn't answer them. The entertainment was less circus-style than at the surreal end of the Edinburgh Festival drama programme.

She said this was about turning attention on the SNP, even though it has had the opposite effect so far. She said it would take the SNP a year to get "contentious" legislation through Holyrood, even though she had just removed any doubt it would pass.

And she sought to ridicule the media for its reporting of the U-turn. One paper said she had bounced the Prime Minister into supporting a referendum: another claimed the Prime Minister had bounced her. (Incidentally, it failed to explain how, only quoting a Labour source saying "they were looking for a baby to throw in front of the juggernaut that hit the Prime Minister on Thursday" - which deserves a special award for off-the-record tastelessness).

Ms Alexander didn't actually deny there had been bouncing going on, but wanted to stress that she will fearlessly, um, abstain, or as she put it "not lead Scottish Labour into the lobbies to vote down the right of the people of Scotland to speak". Note to leader: there are no lobbies at Holyrood.

"There's enough of the huff, the puff and the bluff," she said, coming over all tabloid and macho, but also reverting to her liking for the politics of children's stories. A speech last year featured The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and now it was the Three Little Piggies' turn - apparently forgetting that the Big Bad Nationalist Wolf huffed and puffed and succeeded in blowing down several flimsy houses until the Labour porkers got their act together.