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- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 March 2001 09.08 BST
Last week they had an entire hour to go at Stephen Byers, the minister who has been accused of helping cover up Geoffrey Robinson's hitherto unknown payments from the late Robert Maxwell. They failed to lay a glove on him.
Yesterday they had another full hour to pop at Robin Cook - alleged to have played fast and loose with a select committee report which had been wrongly leaked to him - and Keith Vaz, a junior Foreign Office minister who is charged with all kinds of skulduggery, whatever that might be.
There they were, the two of them, spread out before the Tories like big, juicy bones in front of a pack of junkyard dogs. Or rather, in front of a group of rather superior Afghan hounds, languid and well-groomed, who would never dream of doing anything so ungentlemanly as to chew on a mere bone. Why, such behaviour might get them blackballed from the Kennel Club!
As for Messrs Cook and Vaz, they reminded me of my favourite story about the comedian WC Fields, a notorious reprobate and drunkard in real life. It was his practice, while on the lot, to drink and play cards most of the night, then sleep through the morning in his caravan.
One day the studio head Louis B Mayer arrived and demanded to watch Fields working on set. The crew, equally fearful of both men, dispatched the youngest lad available to bang pitiably on the door. "Mr Fields, Mr Fields, Mr Louis B Mayer is here and he insists on seeing you," the poor lad quavered several times, without result.
Finally there was a heaving and sighing from inside the caravan. "Give Mr Mayer an evasive answer," the famous voice boomed. "Tell him to go fuck himself."
And that's the answer Mr Vaz and Mr Cook gave, in effect.
They talked about Zimbabwe and had a silly, inconclusive argument about whether the ministers were doing enough against Robert Mugabe, and whether Margaret Thatcher had ignored the many previous massacres in Matabeleland.
Someone said he was just back from Kosovo and had nothing but praise for our forces there. (It will be worth reporting when an MP returns from visiting our lads in the field and reports that they are a bunch of lazy, feckless, drunken, womanising cowards.)
Mr Vaz seized on this. "May I thank you for your kind words about British forces. I shall certainly pass them on to the defence secretary," to Tory sniggers. (As if Mr Hoon would say, "Thank goodness you told me, Vaz. I thought they might be a bunch of lazy, feckless" etc.)
Next Andrew Mackinlay, a one-man awkward squad from the Labour backbenches, demanded to know how many ministers had visited Belgrade since October last year. The answer of course is none.
"May I say," Mr Mackinlay boomed at the wretched Mr Vaz, "that is a most unsatisfactory answer ... either there is a shortage of Foreign Office ministers, or priorities are wrong. When is he going?"
Mr Vaz looked flummoxed for once. Roger Gale, a Tory who used to produce Blue Peter for the BBC, then brought scoffs and jeers on himself when he asked a supplementary question before Mr Cook had had time to give him the original answer. Wrap that man in sticky-backed plastic!
Mr Mackinlay cheerfully bounced to his feet again. "We have to provide the opposition as well in this place!" he yelled, and he was absolutely right.
