UNUSUALLY for me, unusually for almost anyone really, but when the party political broadcast came on I didn’t immediately change channels. Instead I watched the SNP’s pitch. It was, I have to say, highly informative, but not perhaps in the way its producers intended.

A man walks through a rural landscape intoning a long list of Tory failings and misdeeds, almost all of which are well known to everyone who hasn’t been in a coma. The bearded protagonist points to an elderly woman, Betty, further up the hill he is climbing.

She, a trifle incongruously, is sitting in an armchair knitting. A waxwork with a blue rosette is brought into frame. Betty attempts and fails to throw the waxwork. Cut to “Vote SNP.” Remaining viewers are then told that was a party election broadcast for the Scottish council elections on May 5.