It was gruesome, horrible, pathetic and miserable. You had to watch it through your fingers, with teeth clenched and stomach knotted. It wasn't even tragic, if tragedy is the story of a great man brought down by his own weakness. Michael Martin is a weak man about to be destroyed by his own weakness.
The Speaker resembled a boxer totally outfought, tottering numbly around the ring, barely aware of what was happening, staggering into his opponent's fists, somehow upright, but swaying. He is a dead man reeling. In any humane venue, the referee would have stopped the fight. But he is the referee! And he's not stopping anything!
Looking at the piteous sight, you feel you ought to be sorry for him. But it is hard to feel sorry for anyone who has blundered into his situation and shows no sign that he needs to blunder straight back out. He didn't even mention the possibility of resignation. Instead, he intends to hold a top-level meeting. A meeting! If this man were tackling the Great Fire of London he would announce a commission on fire prevention measures, to report by the autumn. He simply doesn't get it.
One MP after another stood up and told him to resign. To his credit, he did call them – though of course if he had not the subsequent row would have blown him away like a dandelion seed in a hurricane.
He did apologise, sort of. "To the extent that I have contributed to the situation, I am profoundly sorry." It was, as everyone kept saying, a historic day in parliament. Or at least a hysteric day.
Two MPs who have signed the motion calling on Martin to resign, Gordon Prentice and Douglas Carswell, duly called on him to resign. They demanded a vote on their motion. The Speaker took refuge in procedure. "It is not a substantive motion," he said. "Oh yes it is!" shouted Prentice.
Carswell, who it must be said, does have the air of a prune-faced puritan, said that the house should be allowed to choose a speaker "with the moral authority to clean up Westminster". This breathtakingly rude remark drew a gasp of outrage from some Labour members, but as gasps of outrage go, it was feeble and lacklustre.
David Winnick, an aged Labour sage, asked the Speaker – pleaded with him – to give some indication of when he would retire.
But Michael Martin was no more going to do that than drop his trousers and tango on the table of the house. "You know that is not a subject for today," he said. But it was, precisely and exactly, the only subject for the day.
David Heath, for the Lib Dems, got loud support when he said that the very people "who got us into this position by resisting reform [who can he have meant?] cannot possibly be the people to lead us out of it!"
The blows kept coming, thundering down on to Martin's unwigged head. Perhaps the worst came from Sir Patrick Cormack, up there with Sir Peter Tapsell as grandest of Tory grandees. "The condition of the House is now very like the condition of the country during the Norway debate!" he said, drawing real – wurrgh – croaking and rasping gasps. The Norway debate of 1940 led to Chamberlain's replacement by Churchill, and there is not an MP who would fail to see the significance.
And from Sir Patrick!
"In the name of God, go!" was the phrase he was echoing. He might as well have pulled the black cap on to his head.
The row about procedure continued, with the wretched Speaker frantically consulting the clerks in front of him about whether he was obliged to summon up his own tumbril.
The worst news came near the end, when the only real support came from Bob Spink, a Tory turned Ukip, and largely detested by all sides. It was like a beleaguered banker getting heartfelt support from Sir Fred Goodwin. The end must be very near.