IS THERE any more futile political exercise than the live television political debate among our party leaders? After decades of watching US Presidential candidates going toe-to-toe we finally decided that perhaps we in the UK ought to have a shot at them. In 2010, on three successive weeks David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg climbed into the ring and set about each other like drunk, middle-aged men after a lively wedding in an edgy Glaswegian housing estate: there was a lot of shouting; a lot of perspiration and very few actual punches.

Since then, regrettably, they have become a permanent fixture on our electoral calendar. The first 2016 Scottish leaders’ debate was produced by BBC Scotland last week and another one will follow this week under the auspices of STV.

I missed last week’s debate as I was driving into the BBC to appear on their 2016 programme, and so recorded it. Later that week I finally got round to watching it after reluctantly dragging myself away from an edition of Ice Road Truckers. I needn’t have bothered, though.

At the main entrance to the BBC’s Pacific Quay headquarters I encountered a couple of journalists who had watched the show live.

If they had been reporting events at the annual Chelsea Flower Show they couldn’t have displayed less enthusiasm.

As expected, exchanges were dominated by the SNP doing the hokey-cokey on the 50p top rate of income tax. This consisted of Nicola Sturgeon’s socialism being challenged by most of the other leaders and the SNP leader returning fire by saying she would take no lectures from anyone about socialism.

We also discovered that Kezia Dugdale has slowed her delivery somewhat and lowered her tone of speech and that Ruth Davidson is more obsessed by a second independence referendum than the most ardent of Scottish Nationalists.

Five days will have elapsed before Bernard Ponsonby chairs STV’s production tomorrow night in Edinburgh. Quite what will have significantly changed in the interim to justify having another one of these is anyone’s guess.

Not having to file live copy from any of them I am spared the ordeal of having to work up a head of steam about them, or pretend that any of it really matters.

The only time I did attend a couple of these was during the Scottish independence referendum when I watched Alex Salmond go head-to-head with Alistair Darling. In these debates there was some palpable tension, not least because the two genuinely disliked each other and the exchanges were barbed and aggressive.

Some people believe that these debates enhance our democratic experience and increase our understanding of the issues, thus helping us make a more informed choice at the ballot box. Behave yourselves.

A few days before the big day the leaders are primped up and made to rehearse lines in front of advisers who pretend to be their adversaries. At least as much time is spent in front of stylists and panderers who will make them work on their smiles and order them to lose that queasy verbal tick or point out how much they blink.

At the event itself the journalists and a few party fluffers are admitted to a chamber called the spin-room. Here we watch the debate and vie with each other with wise little bon mots and perjink aperçus to show that, being journalists and answering to a higher being, we are above the business of tawdry party politics. Then we simply write according to our own political prejudices or those who are paying for us to do the gig.

As the leaders’ exchanges begin to get testy and you wonder if anything interesting has ever been said or written about fracking you hear a whisper in your ear. This is when one of the party spin-doctors sidles up to you, affecting an air of nonchalance, to tell you that Nicola/Kezia/Ruth is looking assured and their opponents are looking nervous and twitchy. “I genuinely feel sorry for N,” I was told by one spinner during a debate, “I think he has, you know, issues,” and he rolled his eyes meaningfully. Being assailed by the party factotums is to experience the art of auto-suggestion up close. You may think that you just saw Celtic Warrior win by half a length but you really, really didn’t and your mind must have been playing tricks on you.

Some of these spinners are formerly valued newspaper colleagues and You wonder if they themselves really believe what they are trying to tell you. The whole event is a charade and I’d be surprised if even a single vote has been changed on the basis of the screeching, shouting and finger-jabbing that fills our screens for an hour or so during these ordeals.

I’m not suggesting however, that some type of live television test of the main party leaders’ credentials can’t be crafted. I’d like to see a Dragon’s Den approach. In this we could have four professional and independent experts on the economy, health, education and justice.

Each of the party leaders would be invited in – one at a time – to explain their party’s policy in each area and to seek an endorsement of it. If there had to be a second debate then you could simply choose experts in four other policy sectors.

“So, Ms Sturgeon, has your party actually done anything radical in government?”

“Ms Dugdale, why are so many senior Labour candidates cowering away on the lists instead of facing the electorate?”

“Ms Davidson, what do you really think about cuts to disabled people?”

We could also ask them some straightforward questions on general knowledge and simple arithmetic as a means of establishing how many of them are capable of thinking for themselves. In the event of a tie I’d be inclined to borrow a concept from Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, whereby the contestants are urged to remember as much as they can from their own party’s election manifesto in the space of 60 seconds.

“Didn’t she do well…”