Matthew Norman: A rich banquet of forensic violence

It doesn't matter what it's called, but this one's screaming out for a rematch

The nominal subject of what might loosely be termed the debate was Iraq, while the real matter in hand was their gloriously venomous hatred of one another ... a feral, visceral loathing between erstwhile mutual admirers on the far left which ignited on Capitol Hill in May moments after Galloway unleashed his electrifying verbal assault on the hapless Senate committee chairman Norm Coleman. Galloway addressed Hitchens as a "drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay"; Hitchens responding that Galloway had lied under oath by denying ever having supported Saddam Hussein, before wandering off with the word "thug" on his lips.

In the context of Wednesday's exchanges, that encounter must now be seen as the equivalent of the pre-fight press conference at which the fighters are restrained by their minders after one expresses his ambition to make the other his bitch. The purpose of such pantomime scrapping is to hype the main event, and in this case it worked a treat, with more than 1,000 turning up for the meeting.

We are frequently told that nothing turns off the public and fosters political apathy like spiteful name-calling, but the reverse is the truth. We adore the taste of pure vitriol, and cannot get enough of it, not least because in an age when Tony Banks is regarded as a comedic giant ("He is just like Hitler with a beer belly," of Ken Clarke, is but one instance of his neo-Wildean genius), it's in such scarce supply. Flick through a compendium of political insults, and you find very few modern put-downs in the league of Churchill's response to Bessie Braddock's Gallowayesque rebuke for being drunk ("Bessie, you're ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober"). If pointing out that William Hague's only link to Churchill was resembling a new-born baby counts as a ribcage-buster, the poetic majesty of "drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay" becomes fully apparent.

Having said all that, it might be stretching things to source the root of every Hitchens-Galloway aperçu to the Algonquin Round Table. Writing before the encounter, Hitchens dismissed Galloway's preferred style as that of "vulgar ad hominem insult", in the same paragraph as he called George "disgusting". In the next, just to hammer home his disdain for personal insult, he wrote:

"Those of us who revere the vagina are committed to defend it against the very idea that it is a mouth or has teeth. Study the photographs of Galloway from Syrian state television, however, and you will see how unwise and incautious it is for such a hideous person to resort to personal remarks. Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs."

The good news is that the Hitch - a great man, regardless of his curious conversion to neo-con imperial adventurism, and the only person I've met who, when asked if he wanted an aperitif, replied: "A triple Scotch and a bottle of red wine chaser" - contrived a courageous descent from the high moral ground once the bell rang in New York. "The man's hunt for a tyrannical fatherland never ends," he said of that recent trip to Syria to meet President Assad, shortly before referring to George (perhaps accidentally) as Mr Gaddafi. "The Soviet Union's let him down, Albania's gone, Saddam's been overthrown. But on to the next in Damascus." The tough, no-nonsense counterstrike was predictably close at hand. "People like Mr Hitchens are willing to fight to the last drop of other people's blood," George came back. "How I wish he would put on a tin hat and pick up a gun and go and fight himself."

Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, King John and Richard I, Bobby and Jackie Charlton, the Gallaghers of Oasis ... mythology and human history teach us that ill-feeling reaches its zenith when one brother feels let down by another. Once, and not so long ago, these two might have called each other "brother" at political meetings in draughty community centres, but no longer. "What you have witnessed is something unique," George continued of the volte face of a man he once described, quite rightly, as the finest polemicist of his generation. "The first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug ... You know Mr Hitchens, you are a court jester ... in the court of the Bourbon Bushes."

And so it went on, this rich banquet of forensic violence, until the final bell saw both men metaphorically raise their arms. Who really edged it remains unclear, the judges in the crowd being split evenly. A political science lecturer, Michael Thompson, called it a tie, moaning: "It was more rhetorical than substantive. There was just too much ad hominem oratory." The professor magnificently misses the point. About the substantive issues concerning Iraq, we all made up our minds long ago, and will not change them (or admit changing them) now. Ad hominem viciousness may be the pantomime to the tragedy in Baghdad today, and perhaps there's something distasteful about that. Even so, ad hominem is the Latin for "play the man, not the ball", the Alastair Campbell mantra religiously followed by this government for eight years. Isn't there something refreshing about the dictum being obeyed with style and vigour, by two luminous egos discussing the defining political issue of the age, rather than through whispered malevolent briefings to favoured hacks by greasy apparatchiks in the Commons lobby?

Showing startling magnanimity to the man who nicked her job, the ex-Bethnal Green MP Oona King, in the audience on Wednesday, gave the rhetorical nod to Gorgeous George. "I think it's great to see Britons bringing the tradition of debate to the United States," she said, and she's right. But it would be greater still if they now brought it back to Blighty. Hold it at the Royal Albert Hall (the Brawl in the Hall), Middlesbrough's Riverside stadium (the Slaughter by the Water) or even Swansea (the Rumble in the Mumbles) ... it doesn't matter where it's staged or what it's called, but this one's screaming out for a rematch.