In a 45-minute rant, Cowen angrily described his opponents as "busting their own framework", sounding like he was busting his own framework in the process. Of their economic plan he said, "It's a pig in a poke and the people won't buy it." Oh no, minister: now I've got the image of a pig . . . one of those black-and-pink ones . . . stuck in my head and it won't go away. "It just doesn't oink up. Two and two is oink and you add the zeros oinkerwards. It's not rocket oink. Their two and oink does not make oink oink oink oink oink, oh look, here's a truffle."

He totally lost his rag but, to a degree . . . and it was a degree he crossed . . . the manner of his attack was calculated. Cowen has made a name for himself as a streetfighting straight-talker, endearing himself to many for the perception that he 'says it as he sees it'.

It's canny psychology. The public responds well to a certain amount of anger in its politicians. Look at how the German people took Hitler's fringe-flopping antics to their hearts in the 1930s. Mussolini's furiously shaking purple head became a mesmerising focal point in vast neo-classical piazzas full of hysterical Latin types. "Anger is an energy, " sang John Lydon in the mid-1980s. Seen in a politician, it can have the appearance of passion, of giving a damn;

the trick is to keep it in check. A few years into the second world war the Italian people saw that Mussolini was completely mad. They realised he wasn't going to improve their living conditions, let alone deliver on his vision of a new Roman empire, and he was strung up, upside down, with no trousers on and an owl's face painted on his buttocks.

For a recent example of how unbecoming unchecked anger in someone regarded as sensible and authoritative can be, type "John Sweeney" into YouTube's search engine. Sweeney is a BBC reporter who made a hatchet-job of a documentary about the church of scientology. In order to discredit him, scientologists released internet footage of the reporter shouting his head off at some of their number. It's hard to make out anything he's actually saying in the YouTube clip, but what he's saying isn't what's remarkable about it. The first time I saw it, I thought my speakers were going to break. Sweeney sounds like a pilot screaming into his radio as his plane's about to crash. It's difficult to imagine how anyone will be able to take him seriously again.

Of course, he was probably provoked to beyond the point of endurance, just as Brian Cowen was goaded by journalists and tricked into a rise. If Fine Gael and Labour want to hit back properly at Cowen's comments, they could do worse than goading him again. What would be the best tack? Maybe someone could waft their hands in front of him and go, "Calm down, calm down." Well . . . it certainly did it for John Gormley.