The title of Kirk Jester must surely belong to Mr Ian McGregor, the bilingual elder from Kishorn. Even when he tells the same jokes year after year (''A croft is a piece of land surrounded by legislation'') he still gets a laugh.

His debating technique is to soften us up with a laugh for the sucker punch, a sort of iron fist in velvet glove technique. Yesterday, even Mr McGregor confessed he was quite intimidated by the assembly's top-talker, the Rev Duncan McClements, who promised (in vain) on Saturday that he would make fewer speeches to allow youth delegates more chances.

Mr McClements' biggest (and best) speech so far came yesterday when his blueprint for church unity was heavily endorsed. In page 23/10 of the report he is thanked as its ''fist'' (sic) convener. Definitely a man to have on your side in a sectarian fight.

But the days of bruising punch-ups over bishops are long gone. Apart from some concern from a handful of hard-liners who equate church unity with a ''mega-church'', the far-reaching unity proposals went sailing through. Their nub is the ''maxi-parish'' ( not named after Rev Maxwell Craig, the secretary of the ecumenical body, ACTS). Nor is it intimidation which has caused this change.

There is a whole new climate of realism and co-operation between churches and this is reflected by the ease with which the Kirk has agreed to chew over what would once have been considered poison - shared parishes and ministries with the Scottish Episcopal Church and (some) smaller denominations.

Of course, it has not yet swallowed the plan, and it does not involve all the churches. The proposal today to call on the Government to end RC state schools is a litmus test of the edgy relationship which still exists between the Kirk and the RC Church in a number of areas. When the spokesman for the Catholic church was asked by one of my journalistic colleagues to comment on this upcoming debate, he snarled that he would not waste his breath since it was of no interest whatsoever. (Interestingly, he had been quite willing to comment the day before on the Kirk U-turn on the lottery).

As anyone who has written on RC or Jewish matters knows, there tends to be a reaction from both of these groups that if you are not for us, you are against us.

If you accept that way of looking at things, yesterday morning's declarations on Israel, were anti-Semitic.

However, that would be a perverse distortion of the strong and sincere feelings of support for the plight of Palestinians.

Alas, the Israeli ambassador had left before the result. If he thereby spared himself embarrassment, he also avoided the embarrassing spectacle of Rev John Harris of Bearsden South parading with what looked like a tea-towel round his shoulders.

I just hope he offered to do the washing up at the church and nation committee lunch.