The limbo dancers of the Commons have given your sketch writer new hope.

Last week the bar was set to a record low with the ‘My Dad’s Dementia’ question. Jason McCartney’s poor old pappy’s affliction was put onto the floor of a packed House of Commons by his Tory son, limboing horizontal across the backbenches.

How could that be beaten?

Well, the parade of private grief for public spectacle certainly sharpened the competitive instincts of the Vulnerable community and today, Tory Eliot Colburn went for gold. The bar was set a full 50 per cent lower. How could anyone get underneath that?

To the strains of a heavenly violin, the young Tory MP rose from his place, bent over backwards and shimmied under the pole with ostentatious ease.

February is, he told us, “Emotional Health And Boost Your Children’s Self Esteem Mental Health Month.” The shortest month has the longest campaign name. He told us how many people killed themselves in a good year and that, “In 2021, I was nearly one of them.” The House descended at once into that sacred silence that is even more gratifying to MPs than shouts of laughter.

He was found by family members and pulled back from the other world. “At that moment I felt alone and scared and that there was no way out and that the world was better off without me in it.”

A useful political analogy for the Tory party might have developed from this but it would have upended young Colburn’s attempt at limbo gold. He didn’t fall for the temptation. “I don’t recognise that man anymore,” he said, to gruff Hear Hears from his colleagues who didn’t recognise him either. “Help really is out there and,” he choked, he sobbed, he obscured – or possibly illuminated – the effect he was going for. “Does the Prime Minister agree that one death from suicide is one too many?” (Cries of Answer! would have been welcome.)

“And will he send a message from the despatch box that whatever you are going through, you are not alone, that help us out there and better days lie ahead.”

Many thoughts must have run through the Prime Minister’s fine mind, but he kept them to himself. There are no better days ahead for him. He is alone. He knows that oblivion would be a release, a consummation devoutly to be wished. And he also knows that after the slaughter, he is going to Hell. Or, as we mortals call it, Goldman Sachs. At least he will be free at last of the moral and emotional squalor of the Commons.

But wait. That is not the end of today’s story, for an even greater record was set.

Brianna’s mother – that is, the mother of a murdered trans child – had been invited into the Commons by her Labour MP.

The PM understood she was there because Keir Starmer had a little limbo of his own: “As a father I can’t even imagine the pain she must be going through,” said with a little frisson. He went on, “I am glad she is with us, in the Gallery here today.”

In the light of that information, it was certainly unwise of the PM to reprise his trans joke: that Keir had broken all his promises although “defining a woman was only 99% of a U-turn.”

So, Liz Twist it was who snatched the title in a dazzling last minute effort. She suggested that the PM “Apologise to Brianna Ghey’s mother for his insensitive comment.” In theory, it sounds like a show of delicacy. In practice, it’s what we professionals call “rubbing it in.” It may have been that Mrs Ghey hadn’t arrived before the regrettable remark. It’s possible she hadn’t been aware of it. Labour’s Apologise! Apologise! – shouts with an audible tang of victory in them – would have impressed the error on her most forcefully, and perhaps, painfully.