IT was almost half an hour before Brexit and Boris the Terrible came up at FMQs, which must be a record.

Nicola Sturgeon dropped a precision bomblet on the PM by revealing his no-deal ‘Operation Yellowhammer’ plan appeared to have been watered down.

When the UK Government shared it with the Scottish Government, this recipe for dystopian gumbo had been labelled “base scenario”, meaning Panic Now, Panic Hard.

But when ministers finally had to make it public on Wednesday, the title had mysteriously changed to “reasonable worst case”, meaning Meh, whatever, just ignore it.

“It is for the UK Government to explain whether there is any significance to that difference,” Ms Sturgeon added with lethal understatement.

It was the best of an otherwise rough session for Ms Sturgeon and her anti-Health Secretary Jeane Freeman, as the opposition piled in questions about two state-of-the-art fiascos masquerading as hospitals.

Labour’s Monica Lennon was worried about the billion quid Petri dish in Glasgow where you might want to insist on bottled water.

“The safety and wellbeing of staff at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, and indeed at all hospitals, is the absolute priority,” said the FM.

In the old days, as I recall, the priority in hospitals was making people better. Now it seems to be stopping them getting sicker.

Acting Tory leader Jackson Carlaw raised the latest, year-long delay at the Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital, where the ventilation’s asthmatic.

“The situation is unacceptable,” said the FM, “to say that the Health Secretary and I are angry about it would be an understatement.”

Well anger, even at 19 September 2014 levels, is all very well, said Mr Carlaw, but there were problems known last November, yet the government didn’t act until July.

“Why didn’t he bring it to anybody else’s attention, because I did not know about it and the Health Secretary did not know about it,” whined Ms Sturgeon. The Tory benches burst into laughter. Wasn’t that cluelessness rather the point?

Labour’s Richard Leonard said Ms Freeman had dismissed warnings about shonky hospitals with her “customary disdain”. She froze him with a death stare of denial.

Ms Sturgeon boasted she’d invented a new quango to make sure it didn’t happen again.

“Is the FM really telling people that the answer to that abject failure in new hospital building is the creation of another, as yet unnamed, public body?” asked Mr Leonard. Er, yip.

But health ‘n’ safety brainstorm of the day award went to Nat MSP Maureen Watt, who brought hot new that kitchen knives are often used to kill people and are also pointy.

“Does the FM agree Scotland can be at the forefront of the campaign to replace sharp, pointed knives - which have been proven to have significant penetrative capabilities - with round-ended ones?”

Ms Sturgeon thought Scotland could indeed be at the sharp end of global knife blunting.

Let’s beat those Sgian Dubhs into Spoon Dubhs. Or maybe legislate to have every knife end in something flat, like a baseball bat or a rifle.

If the government can snip the tips off knives, maybe they can take the powder out of bullets next and stop shooting themselves in the foot.