STRAIGHT from the department of 'you couldn't make it up' comes the latest gem about Labour's Holyrood media operation.

Until Monday the People's Party operated out of a ground floor office formerly occupied by the Trots, looking out onto the Garden Lobby through big glass windows. It was a bit visible and therefore was known, both with and without affection, as The Zoo.

This department has now been moved to, of all places, Room 101 -- a.k.a. Big Brother's personalised torture chamber in the Ministry of Love as envisaged by George Orwell in 1984. So has working for Wendy become the equivalent of having your face gnawed off by rats?

We can't say, but Brian Leroni only managed to put up with the torture for a matter of weeks. He was appointed by Jack McConnell, giving up a well-paid newspaper job to become Labour's media chief at Holyrood, but he knew that soon he would be answerable to Ms Alexander. Now, within a matter of weeks, he has gone.

The point about Room M1.01 at Holyrood, to give its full address, is that it is on the first floor on a corridor wholly occupied by Labour MSPs, so outsiders won't hear the screams.

And screams there were in the old ground floor office last week after Ms Alexander's first go at Prime Minister's Questions. Well, if not full screams like a victim being gnawed by rats, then certainly researchers being chewed out by David Whitton on behalf of the new Labour leader.

I was dragged on to television and gave what I hope was an honest first impression of FMQs, that Ms Alexander found a decent issue and stuck with it, but that the rest of question time slipped away from her as Mr Salmond's opponents repeatedly dropped the ball.

The First Minister swatted aside Labour's Andy Kerr and the LibDems' Robert Brown in a way that overshadowed Ms Alexander's performance.

That was my theory. But within minutes journalists were handed by the SNP a transcript of what had actually been said at the fateful committee meeting.

It was a long way from the version pushed at FMQs that the SNP had been punting a new means-tested reform of the currrent system of giving the elderly new central heating.

Labour got it wrong. The SNP minister the day before could not have been more explicit in ruling out means testing.

In no time we had Labour shadow mininsters stalking the corridors of the media block telling us a new version of what their story was, the version that Ms Alexander had meant to say.

That is disastrous territory. How could a party that spent weeks not having a contest get that so wrong? We need our first minister to be brought down to earth and forced into a debate. That's what we do as a democracy.

But ammunition this poor does nothing for the process. Ms Alexander thought she had caught out the nationalists on a safe issue, central heating for pensioners. Someone on her staff got it wrong, so her first headlines have been wrecked.

On a final note. Remember, this is Labour arguing for universal provision of a specific benefit, central heating for the elderly. But Labour has spent more than a deade in office arging against universal benefits.

And as for Annabel Goldie's contribution suggesting that the Tories are the party that opposes wealthy tax avoiders, the less said the better.