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Once inside, Mr Galloway cleverly contrasted his opponent’s past record of support for Palestinian fighters and opposition to the 1991 war in Iraq to his current pro-war stance.

"What you have witnessed is something unique in natural history - the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug," Mr Galloway informed the appreciative crowd. "I do not know what it was," he said. "I do not know if it was Vanity Fair or the lucrative contracts you have landed since. Maybe it was the whisky. Somehow, you decided in 2002/3 to take a line that was in complete opposition to the line you used to take. Were you wrong in ‘91 or are you wrong now?"

Unabashed, Mr Hitchens conceded that his views had changed since 1991. "I have not repudiated them. It’s just that I no longer hold to them," he said to hoots of derison from the audience. He explained that the transformation took place when he found himself among the Kurds of northern Iraq at the end of the war in Iraq in 1991. He vowed to support their secular, leftist opposition to the "fascism" of Saddam.

Even as accomplished a demagogue as Mr Galloway eventually overstepped the mark. To boos from the audience, he suggested that American foreign policy was to blame for the September 11 attacks - particularly Washington’s support for Israel.

"Some believe that those aeroplanes on September 11 came out of a clear blue sky. I believe they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us," he proclaimed. "I believe that because the total, complete unending and bottomless support for General Sharon’s crimes against the Palestinian people."

Mr Hitchens also blundered by issuing an unpopular defence of the Bush administration’s handling of the flooding of New Orleans. "This is where it ends," Mr Galloway crowed. "You start off being the liberal mouthpiece for one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever known and you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans. You know, Mr Hitchens, you are a court jester - not in Camelot like other miserable liberals before you, but in the court of the Bourbon Bushes."

For a college audience in New York, opinion was fairly evenly divided. Although Mr Galloway had student anti-war sentiment on his side, Mr Hitchens held on to supporters of Israel and the Kurds.

"I think it was a tie," said Michael Thompson, a political science professor at William Patterson University in New Jersey. "It was more rhetorical than it was substantive. There was just too much ad hominem oratory."

"The outcome of this debate is going to be seen in ten years time. History will tell," said Pepe Lopez, an anti-war advertising executive. "Hitchens was wrong."

Among those watching was Oona King, the Labour MP defeated by Mr Galloway at the last election. "I think Galloway won in terms of oratory skills," she said."I think it’s great to see Britons bringing the tradition of debate to the United States. But at the end of the day, they are two very arrogant men who both have very flawed arguments."

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