Monday night’s US presidential debate for the first time in months made politics on this side of the Atlantic look reasonable, measured and dull.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sparred over jobs, the “Birtherism” conspiracy and foreign policy in their heated clash - the Republican nominee managing to sniffle his way through proceedings.
But there were moments of complete oddity, which managed to make all the turbulence and gaffes since the EU referendum pale in comparison.
We’ve compiled the six strangest points - from Jerry Springer’s Twitter intervention to Trump’s campaign manager’s Freudian slip.
1. Clinton’s four-word smackdown
The Democratic nominee managed effortlessly to unsettle her opponent and prompt a curious reaction before the 90-minute debate had even started.
When she walked on stage to shake hands with Trump, Clinton annoyed him with a pleasant remark: “How are you, Donald?”
As the Washington Post notes, ‘Donald’ is a first name that few in Trump Tower use - with even top aides and employees referring to him by his surname.
The casual greeting riled Trump, who said with forced courtesy: “Secretary Clinton - yes, is that okay? Good. I want you to be very happy. It’s very important to me.”
2. Trump gets fact-checked on his fact-checker
Things escalated when, in an unusual turn of events, Trump lied about his fact-checker, and, unsurprisingly, got caught out.
With tens of millions of people watching the debate, multiple operations were being run by news outlets to verify and rebut claims made during it.
It was hardly surprising, then, that when Trump encouraged viewers to “take a look” at his fact-checker, they did - and discovered it didn’t exist. Leading to this gem from the team at NPR.
3. An inconvenient truth
Speaking of facts, Trump spent an awful lot of time on Monday denying quotes attributed to him. Like saying pregnancy is an inconvenience for employers, for example. Or that he would try to negotiate down the US’ national debt.
But one particular line that Clinton pulled him up on was the suggestion global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. “I did not - I do not say that,” blustered Trump.
Luckily, he had the good people of Twitter to remind him of a post from 2012 he posted to the social network, laying out that very theory.
4. Trump stutters on stamina
Repetition is a favoured technique of The Donald. But when he used it to hammer home criticism of Clinton’s “presidential look”, Trump looked more like he was stalling for time to think up what to say next.
He repeatedly criticised Clinton’s “stamina”, but the attack failed to land. One person titled a clip of the claims: “When you did not study for the exam then start repeating the same answers for every question.”
Things only got worse for Trump when Clinton issued a belter of a response, pointing to her visits to over 110 countries to negotiate peace deals.
Before landing a final blow: “As soon as he spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”
5. Freudian slip
No sooner had the whole thing ended, the spin operation started. But Trump’s campaign manager made a rather unfortunate slip of the tongue.
Mustering the same levels of eloquence of the man she was supposed to be praising, Kellyanne Conway accidentally said: “It is clear that he came ready to say some rough things - if she was going to challenge him about his abuse... record on women.”
That’s right. Trump’s campaign manager mentioned Trump’s “abuse” of women rather than his record of promoting gender equality.
6. ‘Take care of yourself, and each other’
As if the worlds of politics and entertainment had not collided enough already, US TV host Jerry Springer waded into the debate to cut Trump down to size.
A former Democrat mayor, the star of the ‘Jerry Springer Show’ backed Clinton and issued a cutting retort on Twitter that read: