Flicking Helen With a Water Pistol

The "utterly and totally useless" press gallery have compiled a list of Tamihere-isms with the corresponding response from Helen Clark.

Apparently poor Helen feels like she's "been flicked at with a water pistol." (Sob.)

Lucky for her she wasn't 'mauled by a dead sheep', as Denis Healy once said of an attack by the utterly wet Geoffrey Howe. Still, even dead sheep can bite occasionally: that particular dead sheep mauled Margaret Thatcher so badly he brought down her government.

Will the pistoliero do so in this case? We can only wait. And hope.