NEVER trust a politician. Just when you are counting on them to help you start the year with some light mockery and a few jokes, they decide to be sober, serious and - dare one say it? - sensible. Worse, they agree with one another.

Clearly, a conspiracy against sketchwriters is afoot. How are we supposed to earn a crust if the people's tribunes insist on acting like grownups? The issue may have to be raised with the Press Complaints Commission (Protection of Childish Satire department).

To be fair, my interest in trying to find humour in paedophiles or collapsed attempted murder trials does not, in fact, exist. Equally, if I had to exchange this gig for the chance to witness a grown-up parliament in action, I like to think I would not hesitate.

The scribbler's heart sinks, nevertheless, when the leader of the Holyrood opposition says that her opening question for 2006 is not "party political".

In the cartoon version, the little devil on one shoulder says: "Come on, Nicola, get a grip. What do you mean, 'not party political'? You can take this David Cameron consensus-when-needed stuff too far, you know." On my other shoulder, meanwhile, the little voice of reason tells me that opposition and executive alike are bringing honesty to an important issue: how best to keep dangerous people away from our children.

In England, education secretary Ruth Kelly appears to lack even the foggiest idea. In these parts, the SNP's Ms Sturgeon is making a simple point.

Close to 3000 individuals are on the sex offenders' register yet barely five dozen appear on the list of those banned by law from jobs allowing contact with the young. A disparity, surely?

The mean little devil whispering in my ear hopes that Jack McConnell will feign indignation, claim that his administration has solved every problem, and rebuke Sturgeon for her temerity.

Not a bit of it. He does remind us that Scotland may have come to grips with a difficult issue sooner than England, but he also allows that further legislation may be required.

Putting aside one or two bits or pieces of Jack's usual waffle, this is so reasonable it renders sketchwriting almost superfluous. Nicola, for one, cannot find much to add.

She would like the first minister to accept that everyone on the register of offenders should be forbidden access to children; he says that he hopes to legislate "soon". The exchange is not dramatic, but it is strangely impressive.

At this rate, they will do me out of a job. Yesterday, and not for the first time, we had a rarely-reported phenomenon: when it applies its collective intellect, Holyrood works.

When you dispense with the ritual of biff and bash - my bread and butter, but never mind - parliamentarians remember what matters.

Topic aside, the scene was all but repeated when the Tory leader, Annabel Goldie, spoke of a public "mystified and horrified" at the collapse of an attempted murder trial. Too right: a case where the Crown could not get its act together and produce the accused? What did Jack have to say about that?

No excuses, or none that I heard. Instead, the renewed promise of a "root and branch review" of the justice system while the lord advocate took "appropriate action" over the case in question.

Goldie, even while requesting that McConnell "disabuse any perception of complacency", could not argue with that. Wisely, therefore, she didn't argue.

It will have to stop, of course. A functioning democracy demands the free and fair taking of the Mickey. Yesterday, though, something strange was going on: the politicians were rising above the press.

Whatever next?