ITV leaders' debate review: 'Gentlemen, please!", barked the head teacher as naughty schoolboys Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer squabbled

Woops, wrong channel. But away from Love Island, there was Mr £490 Shoes – Rishi Sunak, who’s been known to wear Prada loafers on building sites. And facing him was Sir Fear Starmer, the Tories’ jibe along with “the knight who won’t fight”. But while the Labour leader declined the challenge of six TV debates – one per week to comprise the boxset you never knew you wanted – he showed for this one.

The first buzzword? Plan. Labour didn’t have one, claimed Sunak, the Tories did and it was working. So, said Starmer, why call the election?

The first clash? Taxes. Sunak warned Labour would put them up by £2,000. Starmer pointed out that under Tory rule there had been a whopping 26 increases.

"We will lower our voices!" Julia Etchingham keeps order between Rishi Sunak and Starmer. Picture: PA

It was feisty from the start and quickly threatened to get nasty. Sunak overshot the allotted time for answers three times in the opening jousts and had to be ticked off by moderator Julie Etchingham. Starmer drew the first applause from the studio audience while Sunak was the recipient of the first guffaws.

The previous night a bunch of Scotsmen had mustered on STV for a kind of fluffers’ undercard to ready the nation for the main bout. Not so much boxers, John Swinney & Co were plonked on a shiny white floor and so more resembled a Dancing on Ice warm-up act, ready for tumbles in their suits which never came.

Pity. This has been rated the dullest election campaign ever. Could Sunak and Starmer – their bottom halves concealed by lightboxes so it seemed they were standing in ice baths – save it? Well, 20 minutes gone, the dullness had disappeared. And if there was any ice, it wasn’t cooling tempers. They talked fast and over each other, firing fusillades of stats. “Gentlemen, please!” reprimanded Etchingham, and then she had to do it again. She addressed them like naughty schoolboys, demanding they raise their hands if they’d increase – that issue again – taxes. So, perfectly reasonably, she wondered how they intended paying for all their shiny, sexy policies.

Neither man is a TV natural, or tremendously charismatic, or good at telling jokes. But serious times call for serious men, with the technocratic pair left to their own devices at last. No more prompting or rehearsing lines. The aides who’d previously been on hand to avert gaffes – in Sunak’s case, hastily placing a cap on a peg at a bowling club so the prime minister wouldn’t be photographed underneath the nameplate “Glasscock” – had to remain in their corners, hoping for, if not knockout blows, then at least a zinger or two.

Some still claim they don’t really know Starmer. Others had their election bingo cards ready, pens poised to cross out the first mentions of “14 years of chaos”, “Liz Truss”, “trashed the economy” and “smash the gangs”, with a bonus point for “toolmaker’s son”. I was able to shout “House!” before the first ad break.

Sunak’s aggressiveness wasn’t a surprise. With the polls predicting a wipe-out, he had to be front-foot, whichever shoes he was wearing. And remember his smirking sarcasm when mansplaining for Tory leadership rival Truss? A debate presenter has fainted in his presence before, but there was no chance of this happening to Etchingham. “Gentleman, please!” she snapped once more. “We WILL lower our voices!”