Jokes are normally terrible at PMQs.
It's a commonly held view. From puns, to veiled insults, to forced references to the week's worst news for Ed or Dave.
But with David 'chillax' Cameron in Mexico, William Hague took to the despatch box.
And he bloody loved it.
Harriet Harman had a few quips – no better or worse than your average PMQ slingshot – but it was the foreign secretary's ease that helped him win the weekly Punch and Judy session.
Labour went on the NHS.
"Labour builds up the NHS and the Tories drag it down," said deputy party leader Harman.
Hague congratulated her on not putting the shadow chancellor on the Labour benches "which helps us to hear".
"Where's the chancellor?" shouted Labour MPs (a new favourite attack line).
"The chancellor is at the G20 the shadow chancellor is presumably doing another opinion poll of what people think of him," replied Hague. "We can tell him that for free."
Later, Peter Bone asked about a divorce from Lib Dem coalition partners.
Hague quipped that Mrs Bone would be "alarmed" to hear him talk of divorce.
And when Lib Dem Simon Hughes almost called Hague "deputy prime minister" in a question on tax avoidance, the foreign secretary simply replied: "I won't mention his slip to the deputy prime minister. It will remain entirely between ourselves within these four walls."
Back on the main substance of the debate, Hague maintained that the government is "proud" of what's happening in the NHS.
"When we look at average waiting times, [they're] lower than they were at the last local election. The total number of qualified clinical staff is up. Hospital infection levels at their lowest since surveillance began."
Harman quoted a poll that found 90 per cent of primary care trusts are restricting access to treatment because of the pressure they are under.
It is "totally unacceptable" if they are, replied Hague. "The criteria must be clinical not financial."
"There is evidence," Harman maintained. Elderly patients are being told "wait in pain or pay and go private".
The foreign secretary turned her questioning around to address tomorrow's strikes. "To any of those individuals, their GP their doctor should be going to work tomorrow not on strike," he said. "Those doctors should be at work tomorrow."
He invited Harman to agree.
"We don't want patients to suffer so we don't want the doctors to strike," she agreed.
But she had a trick up her sleeve.
She quoted the prime minister saying that his three-letter priority was "NHS".
"Isn't it more like 'LOL'?" she added.
"It obviously took a long time to think of that one," Hague dead-panned.
It often does when it comes to PMQs retorts.
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