Some fifty-odd minutes into Jeremy Hunt’s highly anticipated Budget Tory MPs were woken from their collective slumber.
A snarling, shouting, finger-jabbing Angela Rayner sending them bolt upright in an instant, followed by a cacophony of jeering and cheering.
She let fly after the Chancellor pulled her chain about a council house row she is embroiled in.
Her venom startled some onlookers in the House of Commons but the raucous Tory benches lapped it up.
Like any great cricketing Sledger, you keep the pressure on.
And Mr Hunt did exactly that, chiding Labour’s deputy leader about Capital Gains Tax – another row she is embroiled in.
“You really are pathetic” she raged at Mr Hunt. Cue bedlam.
Until then it had been a fairly mundane Budget, the last before this year’s general election.
As expected from this Chancellor, watched on by his wife Lucia and son Jack, he delivered it with efficiency rather than verve.
More like “Spreadsheet” Philip Hammond than a Lawson-esque ripsnorter.
There was a joke about Lord Mendelson’s “fat shaming” of Sir Keir Starmer that got everyone laughing, important stuff about child benefit and taxing smokers.
Aside from stirring up Ms Rayner, it wasn’t until the end of the Chancellor’s 65-minute speech that things really got going.
The pledge to slash National Insurance by another 2p was enthusiastically received, the promise to abolish it all together in the future even more so.
Labour hecklers – shadow frontbenchers Jonathan Ashworth and West Streeting as well as backbencher Toby Perkins – did their best to put the Chancellor off.
Deputy speaker Eleanor Laing, who’d earlier been spotted getting her hair done for the big occasion, was having none of it – giving Perkins the hairdryer treatment for his verbal indiscretions.
As is tradition, the leader of the opposition responds to the Chancellor on Budget day.
Sir Keir blamed the Tories for “maxing out” the nation’s credit card and claiming “Britain deserves better”.
Rishi Sunak, sitting next to the Chancellor, was none-plussed at the Starmer-warble, appearing to message someone on his phone.
As we’ve learned from a recent Grazia interview, he was most likely checking to see if the missus had made the bed this morning.
Prime Minister’s Questions is usually the spicy hors d’oeuvre before the bread and butter of a Budget.
This week had the added ingredient of George Galloway, the former MP for “Baghdad Central”, in the chamber.
Despite his repeated attempts to catch the Speaker’s eye, the Leader of the Workers Party of Britain was denied the chance to speak.
