The week previous had not been a good one for Palmer. After weeks of acrimony, Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie finally announced she was quitting the party, putting a dint in Palmer’s sway in the Senate.

But he appeared in good spirits as he ploughed through a storied history of the year that was, seen through PUP-coloured glasses.

In excruciating detail, Palmer listed triumph after triumph for his party – the resignation of the Australian Electoral Commissioner, having more YouTube views than Joe Hockey ’s budget speech, getting Al Gore to fly to Canberra.

The speech was so dull, in fact, that it appeared Palmer had left his famously outsized personality at home.

Not so.

Trigger point

The niceties about the noble cause of journalism were soon thrown on the floor once questions started flowing about Palmer’s least favourite subject: the lawsuit against him by Chinese firm Citic Pacific, currently in the Queensland Supreme Court.

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It has caused him to walk out of one radio and two television interviews. But at the Press Club he found himself cornered, as journalist after journalist persisted.

Deciding that jumping off the stage was a step too far, he chose instead to get nasty.

After fielding questions that could feasibly have fit into his self-described category of “the right to know", a final question on the court case from the Murdoch Press got too much. When the journalist refused to be shouted down, things got personal. “Why don’t you just ask a question about the topic. Have some guts to [stand up to] Rupert. Don’t do what he tells you from New York. Stand up and be a journalist," Palmer said, chest puffed and eyes wild. “Why don’t you try to be an independent journalist and think for a while? I know your whole career’s depending on it, but you should try to think.

“You haven’t got the guts to ask a question on the topic, because it’s beyond your intellectual capacity. Why don’t you admit it?"

What followed was a farcical contest between the two men, the journalist proceeding with asking his question, Palmer repeating “it’s not true" over it, the equivalent of putting his fingers in his ears and humming.

For some time now it has been clear that Palmer’s act, as the jovial dino-loving billionaire from Queensland, has been wearing thin.

Not just among the media, who for a time gave him the benefit of the doubt. But also apparently with the electorate, who gave his party just 1.7 per cent of the vote in the Victorian upper house at the weekend.

On Monday, more sharply than at any time previously, Palmer’s jolly-man image was well and truly stomped on and Palmer the bully was in sight for everyone to see.

“It makes no sense to attack individuals, we need to attack the ideas for the country to get the best policies," Palmer tried to intone at a later point in his speech.

“You were just attacking an individual journalist trying to do their job," another journalist retorted.

Quite.