Russell Findlay’s speaking slot at First Minister’s Questions is much reduced these days, but what he lacks in time he’s making up for in fighting talk.

The subject was Peter Murrell – of course – but specifically the SNP’s treatment of two whistleblowers who quit the party’s audit and finance committee when they were refused sight of standard financial documents.

Findlay alleged that Victims’ Minister Kirsten Oswald ‘tried to bully these whistleblowers into silence’ and no wonder – according to the Tory MSP, the pair’s testimony ‘proves beyond any doubt that John Swinney and others enabled Peter Murrell’s crimes’.

For those unfamiliar with parliamentary etiquette, these words might sound unremarkable, but in Holyrood they are fierier than the temperatures outside. At least, they ought to have been.

The dog that didn’t bark was the SNP bloc: there was none of the volcanic indignation that would have greeted much milder interrogation of Nicola Sturgeon only a few years ago.

John doesn’t gin them up the way Nicola did, but there was something else at work. Some inside the SNP are deeply dissatisfied with the way the Murrell scandal was handled. 

Too few questions were asked of the thieving chief executive and too few answers have been given in recent weeks.

That pattern held when Findlay urged the First Minister to apologise for ‘his central role in this SNP scandal’. Swinney called Findlay’s claims ‘totally baseless’ and said he had already apologised to SNP members.

Findlay was not to be deterred. He told Swinney ‘he was at the heart of the cover up, then and now’, and surmised that the FM was ‘terrified’ of an inquiry because it might reveal too much.

‘Mr Findlay, who has championed victims, wants an inquiry into the victim of this case,’ Swinney gasped in mock outrage. His revenge? He read out a scathing assessment of Findlay’s leadership from ex-Tory MSP Edward Mountain, whom he described as ‘respected’, which in political lexicon translates roughly to ‘has said something that is useful to me at this moment’.

No apology to the whistleblowers was forthcoming. He did acknowledge James Adams, the Tory MSP who replaces Westminster-bound Douglas Lumsden. 

Adams appears to be 12 years old, sports a dizzyingly tall block of ginger hair which we will henceforth refer to as the Towering Inferno, and sat through the proceedings in serene silence. He’s Ross Greer’s non-evil twin.

In recent weeks, the Holyrood Sketch has been recording Malcolm Offord’s strong start at First Minister’s Questions. On mass immigration, small boats and the social consequences of growing refugee numbers, Reform’s Scottish leader has left John Swinney and his ministers squealing and squirming.

Candour requires me to report that Offord had an absolute shocker yesterday. Complete riddie. Total honker. 

He should find a small boat of his own and seek asylum on a far-flung island where they won’t know about his attempt at parliamentary stand-up.

He suggested Isla Bryson be renamed ‘Isla Man’, referred to Sturgeon as ‘Miss No Comment’, and proposed a museum to her husband’s embezzlement called ‘the Murrell Collection’. I’m not making this up.

There was a gag about gifting one of the ill-gotten fountain pens to the People’s Palace so it could be renamed ‘the People’s Pen’ and something about installing toilet seats beside the Stone of Destiny. 

My notes become sparser at this point because I had to pause to bury my head in my hands and cringe.

It was the worst thing to happen to comedy since Ashley Storrie’s career.