How in the name of God’s holy trousers did such a delicate little flower such as Alan Duncan ever become an MP, and how does he survive the daily cut and thrust of parliamentary life? He must be constantly swooning with the vapours…

Barbara Tucker used a loudhailer to accuse Duncan of being a “murderer, terrorist, child murderer, bomber, disgusting, horrible and totally corrupt” as he left parliament one evening in February.

The MP was left “visibly shocked” as Tucker crossed the road to loudly call him a “war criminal” as he waited for a taxi.

I await any future pronouncements on freedom of speech from Mr Duncan with relish. Oh, hang on…

It is nothing to do with freedom of speech or the right to protest.

How’s that then? Or to put it another way: Yes, you bloody oiks, shut your traps and get on with paying Mr Duncan’s expenses. Know your place.

You can’t really blame him, I suppose. Nobody likes being reminded in their complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, do they? It would make me cross. People are always reminding me of the time I answered the door to a man in wheelchair while my knob was out and it does get a little trying after a while.

Then, without a trace of self-awareness, Duncan said the peace demonstration outside Parliament…

…has become a vulgar and pointless display which is utterly demeaning for the Westminster parliament.

Which means he obviously hasn’t watched Prime Minister’s Questions on the telly or, worse, listened to it on the radio where it sounds like a student rag week lark after too much cider.

Just how does Ms Tucker’s outburst differ from the abuse Duncan and all his chums heap on the Prime Minister each week? You know, the roaring and the braying, the ‘YEEEEAAHHH!’s and the ‘MMMMMEEEEERRRRRRR!’s and the ‘HEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!’s whenever Brown tries to get in a word in edgeways.

I think Ms Tucker’s mistake was her reasonably articulate use of the English language. Mr Duncan must have been ‘visibly shocked’ by her level of debate. If only she’s used ‘parliamentary language’. If only she’d made gibbon noises at him.