On Monday night's Q&A - with jousting jokers Albo and Christopher in the house - a campaign-riveted nation was invited to choose its preferred second banana.

This is a voting exercise we have previously confined to the Logies - Graham and Bert, Bert and Graham, Don and Bert, Bert and Don, Bert and Patti, Ernie and Ding Dong, Daryl and Ossie, Ray Martin and the Paxtons - but in this election year and in the absence of anything decent to watch on late-night telly, why not raise the stakes and choose a sidekick to represent us on the political stage?

But how to pick between this pair: Labor's would-be Green Slayer and self-proclaimed Tory fighter Anthony Albanese, and the Coalition's eternally Grinning Goblin, Christopher Pyne?

Both men have shone in the gracious service of enough party leaders - eight for Albo, seven for Pyne, including retreads - to make gritting one's teeth and giving good gag seem second nature, and on Q&A their double act eased us off to bedtime in the time-slot's time-honoured fashion. Their brio and bonhomie lacked only a contestant trying their luck on a prize wheel whose major loot would once have included a new car (but Australia does neither prize wheels nor new cars any more, and is advised to be grateful for what we've got: submarines, or bits of them.)

Precisely which bits of the submarines might form part of the national manufacturing base going forward was among the matters up for debate on Monday night, but it was clear from the git-go that Q&A's first campaign showdown for 2016 was never going to really fire up over these questions of nuts and bolts.

As Minister Pyne advised before even answering his first question: "I think you can call me Christopher and Anthony Anthony tonight, since it's like a fireside chat."

And a fireside chat it was, even if one had to imagine the burning logs and the snifters of brandy being shared by the two gentlemen snuggled cosily before the flames. The Pyne/Albo double-act is well-rehearsed, courtesy of their regular hit-and-giggle gig on breakfast television and their former tango as duelling managers of business in the House of Representatives. The nation has also observed them in the contentious act of cooking dumplings on Kitchen Cabinet.

So we knew this going in: these two like each other. In each other's company, we can expect an abundance - indeed, at times, an overdose - of nudge-nudge, wink-wink larrikinism that is equal parts endearing and annoying, if not always enlightening. And with both men knowing they were not going to face a serious, campaign-changing counter-punch, the encounter in this election-loaded instance was somewhat … tepid.

When a questioner wanted to know when the real Malcolm Turnbull would finally stand up, we got this from Pyne: "He looks like a Prime Minister. He sounds like a Prime Minister. He acts like a Prime Minister, he's obviously intelligent, he's a success in his own right, and he's brought that success into politics. I think he will continue to be Prime Minister."

And we got this gentle thwack back from Albanese: "I think the public are very disappointed - they're not angry with Malcolm Turnbull. I think they're disappointed with Malcolm Turnbull."

On the question of Petter Dutton's comments last week on illiterate and innumerate job-stealing migrants, we heard this from Pyne: "He wasn't in the least bit trying to talk down refugees. We've had a very good and decent refugee system in Australia, since the Second World War, the second most generous in the world. One that I strongly support. And refugees have made a fantastic contribution to this country."

We got this back from Albanese on his way to giving Dutton a kick: "If Peter Dutton had given the answer that Christopher Pyne just gave, there wouldn't be an issue. There wouldn't an issue."

We had some to-and-fro on climate change, some back-and-forth on asylum seekers, some he-said-he-said on the NBN - all areas of debate that remind the electorate only how compromised both sides are on key issues in recent history.

The episode closed with a plea from the audience for cross-party unity, a question that drew an agreeable nod from Albanese, who noted: "One of the criticisms that will come up occasionally of myself and Christopher [appearing] on another network is it seems like you talk to each other and you like each other. As if that's a problem."

Pyne saw the opening for a gag: "Sounds like a leadership pitch."

Albanese: "See what happens when you're nice to him?"

Pyne: "I caught you out."

It was grins all round, closing on a bipartisan swipe at the Greens.

All well and good, but this Q&A also served as a reality check: if the big boys are going to serve us up this kind of love-in, perhaps it really is time to examine the make-up of the election debate diet. After all these years, it might be time for a shake-up. Australia is surely ready.

Bring on a third banana. Who knows, one of those big boys might slip on the skin.