It was the Ollie and Ange Show at Prime Minister’s Questions again, with Rishi away doing America’s Biden, so to say.

Bizarrely, a Tory backbencher whooped when Oliver Dowden entered the chamber. It seemed an inappropriate greeting, as if the sober-suited Deputy PM were Taylor Swift or a rapper: Snoop Doggy Dowden or Erumem perhaps.

Actually, it turned out that Gene Simmons, bassist of rock band Kiss, was present in the gallery, reportedly as a guest of DUP MP Ian Paisley. Kiss: famous for make-up, costumery, and lyrics like “She takes you down and drives you wild”? Democratic Unionist Party? Discombobulated, I began to wonder if someone had laced my breakfast dram with something peculiar.

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The feeling persisted when the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, announced the result of a tug-of-war competition between the Commons and the Lords. Tug? War? Mug-of-war, I could understand. At any rate, Sir Lindsay crowed proudly: “We beat the House of Lords one-nil.”

Whoop-de-doo. No whoops the noo, just standard cheers, from Labour when their deputy leader Angela Rayner rose briskly to ask a snappy question about judicial jiggery-pokery around the Covid inquiry.

Quoth Ollie: “I welcome the much shorter question from the right honourable lady today.” Then he waffled on at such length himself that Sir Lindsay gently rebuked him.

Ange chipped away at Oliver’s claim to be common, saying: “Using his vast knowledge of working-class Britain, does he think working people will thank him for spending hundreds of thousands pounds of their money on loophole lawyers just so the Government can obstruct the Covid inquiry?”

The Dowdster replied that they’d supply any relevant documents to the inquiry but not stuff going back years that could cover “anything from civil servants’ medical conditions to intimate details of their families”. Eh? Why are they holding such information? Does the civil service union know?

Ollie then noised up Ange by reminding the Hoose that she’d acquired two pairs of noise-cancelling headphones on expenses, adding that, to be fair, “if I had to attend shadow cabinet meetings, I think I’d want to tune them out too”. Ear-ear, or words to that effect, shouted the Tory benches.

“These punchlines are dire,” complained Ms Rayner shortly afterwards. Mr Dowden thought it more dire that Labour were accepting money from Just Stop Oil protesters. Maybe they misread the name and thought it was Just Stop Ollie.

That was an aim with which we all could sympathise when the Dowdling replied with moon-howling irrelevance to a question from the SNP’s depute Westminster leader, Mhairi Black, about “trashing the economy”. Yes, wasn’t that in the Tory manifesto?

“One month ago,” said Oliver dreamily, as if under hypnosis, “the whole nation came together celebrating that wonderful moment of pomp, pageantry and pride in our nation.” Mhairi, by contrast, had described the Coronation as “a pantomime”.

As Ms Black sat open-mouthed, unable to believe what she was hearing, saliva and brain cells spilled from Oliver’s every cranial orifice as he concluded with an asinine flourish: “The real pantomime is the SNP in Scotland.”

What the actual flip? Seriously, what loony provided him with lines like that?

Unsurprisingly, and in some shock, Mhairi retorted: “I don’t know what question the Deputy Prime Minister was answering.”

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Oliver was able to reply similarly when asked a question by the SNP’s Gavin Newlands. Mr Newlands derided Oliver’s self-portrayal as “Mr Normal”, noting that, on top of his £154,000 salary, he’d charged two businesses £670 an hour for some extra-curricular work.

“Does Mr Normal really think he’s worth 65 times a Bantu nurse?” Bantu? Were these poor African nurses really paid so badly? Then I realised Mr Newlands was referring to British nurses. Being Scottish, he hadn’t enunciated properly: band two nurses.

Understandably, the Deputy PM replied: “I’m not quite sure what the question was aiming at.” The aim of an elderly Tory MP behind Flick Drummond (Con) should have been to stay awake as she spoke passionately and well about children not at school.

This old buffer dozed off then came to and nodded gravely, having heard nothing. All this with cameras present. Surely, it’s not asking too much to stay awake for half an hour?

Many years ago, in tug-of-war losers’ place, the House of Lords, I witnessed a peer dozing off, with his head falling into the lap of his neighbour, an Ulster Unionist who’d never even been touched by his wife.

I wonder now if, suffering afterwards from post-traumatic stress, the Unionist lord went home for a stiff drink and a wee boogie to Hotter Than Hell by Kiss.