LIONEL Richie was wrong – there is nothing easy about Sunday morning. Ask Laura Kuenssberg, who made telly history yesterday by becoming the first woman to take permanent stewardship of a flagship Sunday morning politics show.

Women have anchored such programmes before, most recently Sophie Raworth after the departure of Andrew Marr, but Kuenssberg is the first to have her name cemented in the title. It’s very important to be in with the bricks like that. So after Frost on Sunday, Breakfast with Frost, and The Andrew Marr Show, it’s now Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

First impressions? To use a word with which the Scots broadcaster will be familiar, what a guddle.

In the unlikely event the production team make only one change between now and next Sunday, it should be to get rid of the espresso machine pronto. Over-caffeinated barely begins to describe the mood as the tone veered all over the shop, the late night, laid back, vibe of Brexitcast and The Last Leg sitting awkwardly with interviews on Ukraine and the energy crisis.

The look of the show was similarly confused, with light, bright graphics contrasting with Kuenssberg’s black sparkly dress, which in turn was at odds with the pink trouser suit she wore in the credits. (And yes, no-one would probably comment on the clothes if it had been a man, but Kuenssberg recently did a shoot with Vogue, so clothes clearly matter to her.)

Nothing on screen jarred as badly as “the panel”, made up of Cleo Watson, Boris Johnson’s former deputy chief of staff, Emily Thornberry, Labour MP and shadow attorney general, and Joe Lycett, a comedian introduced by Kuenssberg as “not on the left or the right”.

Usually seen on Channel 4, Lycett has a reputation as a spoof merchant who stages “gotcha” stunts to embarrass people in power. Was anyone on the production team familiar with his work? If so, what made them think he was the right choice for this, or any, Sunday show?

Kuenssberg looked startled when her interview with Liz Truss ended to the sound of Lycett, on the other side of the studio, applauding and whooping.

“I’ll let you calm down a bit before I come to you,” joked Kuenssberg, joining the panel.

Lycett was just getting started, however. “‘You said earlier than I’m not left or right or right wing. I’m actually very right wing, and I loved it,” Lycett said, his sarcasm obvious.

When Kuenssberg said she wanted her show to have “a bit of fun” I don’t think this was what she had in mind.

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The sit-downs with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were supposed to be a coup for the first programme, but neither said anything new, and in any case the ballot for the Tory leadership was already closed. Ms Truss’s promise of an announcement on the energy crisis within a week, but with no further details, was underwhelming to say the least.

One of the main tasks of a Sunday show is to produce something that will lead the news for the rest of the day and make a story in Monday’s papers. Alas for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the programme was scooped before it even started. Half an hour earlier, Nicola Sturgeon told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge that Liz Truss would be “a disaster” as Prime Minister if she governed the same way she had campaigned.

Scotland’s First Minister also managed to add fuel to the fire in her spat with Ms Truss, who had called Ms Sturgeon an “attention seeker”. In turn, the First Minister, during one of several appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe, told an audience that Ms Truss had asked for her advice on getting into Vogue.

Ms Sturgeon made light of the verbal to and fro, saying she was perfectly willing to build a working relationship with Ms Truss as she had with David Cameron, Theresa May, and to a lesser extent Boris Johnson.

“I’m not perfect,” she said. “I’m not saying that I’m blameless when those relationships go through difficulties, but I will try to build that relationship.”

As to being an attention seeker, she added: “I don’t mean this pejoratively but I’ve never looked at Liz Truss and thought that she was some kind of shrinking violet. That’s not a criticism. In politics that’s part of the job you have to do.”

Ridge’s show zipped along. Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, despite everything going on, was a long hour.

Frost was an iron fist in a velvet glove; Marr a winning mix of forensic and aggressive. Kuenssberg will find her own style. On the evidence of yesterday she is not quite there yet.