Sketch: Dramatic moment left the First Minister in a bit of a damned spot over NHS claims

HOW appropriate that it took someone called Macbeth to bring a bit of drama to First Minister’s Questions.

The Macbeth in question, however, had no discernible link to the Scottish medieval king nor his “fiend-like Queen” Lady Macbeth.

Rather it was Helen Macbeth,92, a great, great granny from Renton, Dunbartonshire, whose presence at Holyrood led to yesterday’s stushi at Holyrood.

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For although yesterday’s parliamentary session had little to do with Shakespeare’s Scottish play, it caused more than a little toil and trouble for Alex Salmond.

As Johann Lamont, the Labour leader, began questioning Salmond on the SNP’s health record, the First Minister was unaware that Mrs Macbeth and a great grandfather Jack Barr, 65, also from Renton, were peering down on him from the public gallery.

The first indication that the two senior citizens would find themselves in the political spotlight came when Ms Lamont revealed that Mrs Macbeth was “frozen” when she was treated in the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, because staff were unable to spare her a blanket.

Mr Barr spent three nights in the same hospital with only a “beach towel” to keep him warm.

At first, Salmond fended off Lamont’s questioning with his customary self-assurance, saying that Labour had already been forced to “partially apologise” for a “scare story on the shortage of blankets” in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board area.

But the game suddenly changed when Lamont revealed that Mrs Macbeth and Mr Barr were actually in the parliament.

It was then that Ms Lamont urged the First Minister to “stop the rhetoric and face up to the reality of his own responsibility.”

It was then that the First Minister began to realise that Lamont’s tale – to misquote the Shakespearean Macbeth – was not “told by an idiot”, nor was “full of sound and fury” and was not “signifying nothing”.

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The furore resulted in the First Minister deigning to meet with the two pensioners, who told it to him straight.

Or as Mrs Macbeth put it afterwards: “I was shocked to think that a hospital that size did not have adequate bedding for their patients.”

Mrs Macbeth and Mr Barr’s contribution led to an apology from Salmond who promised to sort out the blanket-shortage.