The Treasury is not always good at predicting what the headlines will be in the days and weeks after a Budget.

George Osborne's 2012 Budget eventually went down in history as the “omnishambles”, of course, but it took a while to get to that stage.

On day one the newspapers were full of anger about the “granny tax”.

That was followed up in subsequent days by stories about the “pasty tax” and eventually even the “church tax”.

Years later I asked a Treasury aide what they had expected to make the news from that Budget.

He looked sheepish. “Borrowing figures”, he mumbled.

Who knows if the Treasury were expecting bad headlines from Philip Hammond's first Budget, but they certainly wrote him a lot of jokes.

His statement itself was notable for some of its omissions.

Such as the word 'Brexit'.

But it did see the Chancellor, a politician who has been dubbed "spreadsheet Phil" and, ironically, “box office Phil”, make fun of his own nerdish tendencies.

With deadpan delivery, he made Tory MPs laugh out loud when he tod them "by the way they don't call it the last Labour government for nothing..."

He even proved that he could even tell a joke on his feet.

As he outlined a pledge to invest in existing schools, as well as give money to new ones that Labour claims are unnecessary, one Labour MP shouted "No you won't!"

Grinning, the Chancellor, or Panto Phil as he will now be known, replied quick as a flash: "Oh yes we will."

The Prime Minister was not to be outdone, when he complained that she had nicked two of his announcements, Mrs May firmly reminded him that it was International Women’s Day.

Unfortunately for the Labour frontbench they appeared to make a policy decision early on to just stare impassively ahead whenever Mr Hammond made a joke.

While this allowed them to look unimpressed the first few times, it began to look a bit strange as he made gag after gag.

On his own side of the chamber, Mr Hammond was aided by the fact that much of the government frontbench was in a pretty giggly mood.

Mrs May threw her head back in laughter at one point.

It appeared that not everyone was impressed though.

The Home Secretary Amber Rudd seemed to give out a rather large yawn as he was speaking.

And as his successor outlined a tax raid on the self-employed Mr Osborne allowed his eyebrows to travel in to the middle of his forehead, as if to say "well, that is brave.."

If this had really been panto then those in the public gallery might have pointed to Mr Osborne, sitting over the Chancellor's shoulder and warned Mr Hammond: "He's behind you...".