For the 98% of you who missed it, Labour spin-wonk Douglas Alexander appeared on BBC2’s The Politics Show today. He and he alone has so far brought Andrew Neill to just a fraction below the point of calling a guest something physiologically Latin.

The scenario was straightforward: Neill mentioned that Hain, Balls and Brown were clearly out there urging Labour voters to go all LibDem in constituencies where Labour was lying seventh or lower. What did Dougie think about that, Andrew asked. They’re not doing anything of the sort, said Mr Alexander.

As the conversation with other guests moved on, there was much rustling of papers by Andrew Neill off-camera. He returned to the fray and quoted Hain and Balls at length. No – you’re wrong, Douglas Alexander insisted. Look, said Brillo, we both speak English: one of us is mad, and I have the feeling it’s not me. The other guests were again invited in to defuse the situation. There was a point at which I expected a frantic Mark Thompson to rush on in order to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Douglas Alexander is one of Lord Mandelson’s early attempts to clone himself. The very early nature of the attempt is mainly evident from Doug’s inability to get beyond playing the bloke in the Monty Python Argument Sketch. Whatever you say, he says “No it isn’t”. It’s Tuesday – no it isn’t. This is Planet Earth – no it isn’t. And so on.

Mr Alexander hasn’t grasped the basic elements of Mandelsonian obfuscation at all. Whereas Mandy can be asked about expensive watches and steer the question effortlessly towards Britain’s technical excellence, Dougie the Sheep will assert that £23,000 is not an expensive watch. Define expensive, he’ll say. Define watch, he’ll add. The difference is, whereas with Mandy there is the frustration of trying to swat an intelligent bluebottle, with Douglas Alexander there is merely the desire to thump a densely pedantic Scottish prick.

The serious point in all this is that – no matter how loud we all shout, or how hard we poke the chests of these robots – they will never, ever learn one simple lesson: there is nothing clever in defending the indefensible, insisting that day is night, and inventing a Moon nobody else can see. It is merely irritating.