Memo to Wendy: don't spoil your argument with hyperbole (derivation from the Greek - to overshoot through the use of exaggeration). And if you insist on hyperbole, then avoid the use of clichés. I refer in particular to the word “meltdown”.

Meltdown has become the vogue word to describe anything from a minor setback to a full-blown disaster. In reality, it refers to a nuclear power plant when the core overheats and the whole system threatens to blow apart, so it should not be used lightly. But it is now so freely bandied around, it has ceased to have the desired shock effect.

To say that Gordon Brown's premiership is in meltdown, or the banking system faces meltdown, or Sir Alan Sugar is in meltdown as he views the hopelessness of his last three candidates, is to drain the word of meaning. Like all clichés, it should be avoided like the plague.

Up until then, Wendy Alexander had been doing rather well. She has adopted a low-pitched, but rather effective tone of voice these days, a bit like a Black & Decker drill on very low revs, the idea being to bore through Alex Salmond's bouncy rhetoric and skewer him to the wall. She had latched on to complaints from directors of education that cutbacks in spending were beginning to have a grave impact on schools across the country, and though the First Minister bounced back as he tends to, the low-intensity drill carried on.

Ms Alexander does not engage in badinage, nor does she have much eye contact with the enemy. She tends to say her piece, then stare grimly ahead of her. This is beginning to have an effect on her backbenchers. It was noticeable yesterday, as Mr Salmond was rehearsing the historic achievements of his administration (we can now recite them in our sleep) that Labour MSPs were caught in a state of almost catatonic immobility, staring at the First Minister with a dead look in their eyes, rather like the zombies in City of the Living Dead.

At was at this point that Ms Alexander used the M-word. Admittedly she was quoting someone from a head teachers' association, but what she said was that the education system was “in meltdown”. Tactically a mistake; logically debatable; pragmatically simply wrong. Mr Salmond grinned his wolfish grin, and listed those education authorities that are not only continuing to function perfectly well, but are also actually beginning to implement some of the SNP's proposed reforms. It caused glee in the SNP ranks, but only emphasised the glazed looks on the Labour benches. The problem is that Ms Alexander makes perfectly decent debating points, but there is not much give and take, no quick repartee, or subtle scoring points. Above all, she does not do humour. Mr Salmond, by contrast, majors on humour. So while she throws in dark phrases such as “scaremongering”, “a growing sense of outrage and disbelief”, Mr Salmond leans back and refers to “the generosity of spirit for which I am famed and renowned ...” which gets everyone laughing.

I have no suggestion as to how this might be changed, but I would suggest that the formula adopted by Nicol Stephen, the Liberal Democrat, is worth studying. He (or his team) digs out some ancient SNP press release promising great things, then quietly demonstrates that it has been shredded. Yesterday, after showing that a promise of a “bright future” for Glasgow's Science Centre had been comprehensively broken, because its grant had been cut, he asked the First Minister who else had been promised a bright future so that they could check their wallets.

It was a good line, perhaps even a great line, and Mr Salmond had no answer to it. Mainly because there is no answer.

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