It is interesting how voice quality can make all the difference at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Ed Miliband seems to have swallowed several family packs of Tunes lozenges. His voice sounded unusually clear yesterday, without its normal nasal twang. Combined with a disciplined debating approach, this led to a commanding performance (up to a point – of which more later).

David Cameron, in contrast, was sounding slightly hoarse. Perhaps he over-indulged in Russian hospitality in some shape or form. The problem with being hoarse at PMQs is that you end up shouting to compensate. That makes it worse and, red-faced, you give the impression that you are struggling. The Gordon Brown syndrome. If you add an unusual element of real anger, some stumbling over words and Cameron’s shaky hold on his brief (both metaphorically and literally – he dropped it), you have Cameron’s most unconvincing showing so far.

It was going so well for Miliband, but, then, he rather blew it. He said that the Chancellor had “lashed himself to the mast – not for the first time perhaps”, referring to some recent very dog-eared “revelations”.

Noone gives a flying bat’s fart (one of the DPM’s expressions) what George Osborne did in his early twenties. It really is childish to mention it. It was beneath Miliband. He should have sensed that and avoided such cheapness.

LibDem MP watch (1): Gordon Birtwhistle joined the PM in congratulating Burnley Football Club on its new University footballing scheme.

LibDem MP watch (2): Malcolm Bruce asked about accelerating the move to the tax threshold of £10,000 rather than abolishing the 50 pence tax rate or fiddling with VAT.

Labour “Whip’s Darling of the week” award for the most OTT partisan question goes to Robert Flello.

DPM-watch: The “nodding donkey” of the early months of the coalition has well and truly been whipped into the knacker’s yard. You can barely discern a rare, almost imperceptible inflection of the Deputy Prime Ministerial cranium, but that’s it.

Comic turn of the week: Sir Peter Tapsell. I am not quite sure what he was on about (something about bankers, I think), but it was hugely entertaining. – So much better than life in the real world. But he wears a waistcoat and he is Father of the House, so they let him make his speech and indulge him. – Such a contrast to the reception given last week to Nadine Dorries.

Pointless Standy-uppy-sitty-downy action of the week: Caroline Lucas, who was particularly keen to ask a question, but sadly evaded the eye of Mr Speaker, so we shall never know what sanctimony she had to share with us. This happens to numerous MPs each week. But at least they get a bit of exercise before lunch, standing up and sitting down again every time an answer is finished.

Losing the train of thought in mid-question award: Pauline Latham (Con). MPs don’t often get called at PMQs. Is it really too much to ask that they say their question without pausing and apparently losing the will to live in mid-sentence?

Paul Walter blogs at Liberal Burblings