At 12.25 a digital display popped up on the Scottish Parliament TV screen, counting down the minutes to Alex Salmond’s long awaited committee appearance.
The seconds ticked, with a growing anticipation of the time bomb about to blast apart Scottish politics.
Perhaps we were expecting Salmond, the skilled orator and accomplished debater, to deliver an epic clash akin to George Galloway’s famous performance in the US Senate.
But after the dramatic build up of the last weeks, the cancelled appearances and rumours of smoking guns - spoiler alert, it didn’t match up to the hype.
The conspiracy theorists will have to keep their “End is Nigh for Nicola” placards for another day.
Salmond had reigned in the pit bull, and found his inner wounded puppy, and was less scorching the earth, than peeing on the lawn.
“This is not about me,” said Salmond in his opening statement, after all, the committee wasn’t scrutinising him but the Scottish Government’s shambolic investigation of the harassment claims.
But this was the first time he has spoken publicly since he walked free from court and Salmond was the only star in town.
Salmond, a politician, journalists once filed under rent -a- gob, told the committee he had chosen not to speak to the media.
He said: “I have turned down hundreds of such offers which as committee members will know has not hitherto been my normal policy.”
For a self publicist like Salmond, that was a helluva sacrifice.
Initially there was nervousness, his throat catching, his mouth dry, his shoulders weighted and his breathing tight.
Salmond spoke of the toll of his ordeal, financially and personally, emphasising his victim hood, with only passing recognition of the complainants’ suffering.
There was emphatic, rehearsed outrage, where we half expected a director to shout “cut”.
Salmond was “astonished” that “the First Minister, the First Minister of Scotland, used a Covid Press conference, a Covid press conference” to effectively question the jury in his case.
Legal restraints he said, had the committee, “neutered” and “blindfolded with their arms tied behind their back” but again no cognizance of legitimate concerns the complainers not be identified.
He found an odd ally in Tory MSP and Brexiteer, Margaret Mitchell who fed him opportunities to dig at Sturgeon, adopting the tactic - my enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Salmond said he wanted a “leadership which is strong and robust and capable of protecting each and every citizen from arbitrary authority”.
But what about the abuse of the authority he had exerted over women who worked for him?
Salmond was cleared of 13 charges of sexual assault after a trial last year but he was still a married man prone to being sleazy and there was that “sleepy cuddle”, with a staffer.
Lib Dem Alex Cole Hamilton was keen to remind him of this.
He asked Salmond: “Laying aside the charges of which you’ve been acquitted, and the allegations that you deny, of the behaviours that you have admitted to, some of which are appalling, are you sorry?”
If looks could kill, Cole Hamilton, would have needed an undertaker and there was no apology forthcoming from Salmond.
In the exchange committee convenor Linda Fabiani, had to remind the two men to curb the mutual mansplaining, as they squabbled over the relevance of questions.
She said: “Can I just make it very clear that it’s my job to decide all these things, so would the two of you just think of what we are here for.”
Outside the Holyrood bubble, it was easy to get lost in the technical tangle of policy chat but boiled down, what emerged was a parliament which has consistently failed alleged victims of sexual harassment.
Salmond defended the fairness at work policy under his reign saying it covered harassment, so there was no need to specify sexual harassment.
Complaints were dealt with “ informally” in back rooms and in Salmond’s case, a sorry was deemed enough for one complainant.
He implied that a more robust approach to complaints of sexual harassment, taken by the current administration, had been a knee jerk reaction to the #metoo movement.
It was “spatchcock”, he said, a 17th century word, which refers to slitting open a chicken and grilling it.
Salmond’s performance was in the end, a tad perfunctory, but he succeeded in stirring the silt in the murky waters the Scottish Government put itself in.
In truth none of the protagonists has emerged well, from this sorry tale of Government incompetence and backbiting.
It has left the complainants suffering, the public purse plundered and Scotland’s reputation tarnished.
And in the midst of a pandemic and a forthcoming election, the timing of this political dog fight could not be worse.
Salmond said he has ‘no doubt’ Sturgeon broke the ministerial code and knew about complaints but he stopped short of demanding her resignation.
We know he wants Sturgeon’s head, but the only thing skewered and served on a plate yesterday, was some imaginary “spatchcock” chicken.
