As Ann Widdecombe, right, makes her debut on the front bench Ken Smith judges her first bout with Health Secretary Frank Dobson to be an honourable draw

ANN Widdecombe yesterday achieved what the sexists in the Commons thought she could never aspire to - she set the pulses racing amongst the Tory men behind her.

Unkindly dubbed Doris Karloff by the tabloids, Miss Widdecombe is never going to compete in the hugely irrelevant question of who are the Commons pin-ups.

Instead she made Tory hearts beat faster by the simple expediency of comfortably attacking the Labour Government's woeful record in failing to reduce hospital waiting lists.

It was her first outing as the Tories' Shadow Health Minister, and like a surgeon cutting away at a growth, she continually stuck the knife into Labour's inability to stop waiting lists growing.

It was just what the doctor ordered, to keep the health analogy going, for the Tory benches behind her, who have had too few heroes in the last year with the ability to score points against the Government.

Bearded, overweight Health Minister Frank Dobson was perhaps a tad ungallant when he welcomed the ''Right Honourable Lady'' to her new post by suggesting that: ''We may be, in a sense, matching accessories, as neither of us would count as being at the fashionable end of politics''.

Flattery, particularly versions to be filed under slighting, would of course get him nowhere.

Miss Widdecombe really had only one question for the rotund Health Minister, and that was when was he going to resign for failing to reduce waiting lists as Labour trumpeted it would do before the election.

One more year to get them back to the levels which existed when Labour was elected, and then down by 100,000 by the next election, promised an optimistic Mr Dobson.

She was not to be dissuaded. Hospital corridors have already been ''carpeted by the broken pledges of the Labour Party,'' she declared.

Of course Labour was not going to let Miss Widdecombe's first day in her new job pass without dispatching a couple of the troops to try to verbally trip her up.

Digging out quotes from Miss W's past, back bencher Audrey Wise referred to an occasion eight years ago when the new Tory spokesman said she did not recognise such a thing as a carer, in reference to people looking after aged relatives and so on.

Then fellow back bencher Phyllis Starkey - notice the use of women to avoid the accusation of getting the boys to bully her - asked Mr Dobson: ''In making appointments to hospital trust boards, have you ever knowingly appointed anyone who advocates chaining women prisoners to their beds as an aid to childbirth?'' A reference of course to an incident while Miss Widdecombe was Prisons Minister.

It obviously rankled, as at the end of questions she asked the Speaker if it was right for people to make inaccurate statements about other Members when they did not have the chance to respond to them.

Speaker Betty Boothroyd appeared to agree as she regally declared: ''Let's discuss policies in this House, and not the personalities.''

The Dobson v Widdecombe bout was probably an honourable draw. But there was sufficient enjoyable verbal jousting to suggest future rematches will be bruising encounters. The Tories may have found their most unlikeliest of heroines.