When I was younger, I liked to talk. A lot. Every parents’ evening, every teacher would say, “Millie is a very enthusiastic child,” (in a way that made it clear they were trying very, very hard to be diplomatic) “but she could perhaps do with being a bit quieter”. One particularly blunt teacher told my parents I was “bossy”.

For years, I was told I was too eager to contribute, answered questions too quickly and had to learn to “give the other children more of a chance”. (Incidentally, I may have taken this advice a little too seriously: since starting university, every supervision report has told me I need to contribute more. Or just contribute, full stop.)

Having had a childhood of learning the hard way the intricacies of polite interaction, it is, naturally, a source of great consternation to me that our politicians – our Great Leaders – have clearly not had the pleasure of the same. For one thing, it makes me wonder: what other foundational childhood principles have they not learnt? Do they not know that i comes before e, except after c? Were they never told not to pull faces in case the wind changed? Heavens above – do they swim after eating? It’s a worrying thought.

Watching Prime Minister’s Questions, I realise I must surely have some kind of deep-seated, subconscious self-loathing, because why else would I watch it? It is like rubber-necking on a three-car pile-up on the A14 for a whole 30 minutes. I could walk into a reception class loaded with tickets to Disneyland and the response would be more measured, more considered, than the debacle which takes place in the House of Commons every Wednesday lunchtime.

Witnessing a chamber full of grown adults jeering, heckling and shouting over each other makes me shudder. Every time I turn to BBC Parliament, I have to remind myself that what I am watching is not, in fact, the riot scene in Mean Girls (‘on Wednesdays, we ask questions!’).

Of course, being the drama llama I am, part of me does love the theatre of PMQs. I particularly enjoy John Bercow’s witty and acerbic put-downs. Sitting on his Speaker’s throne (potentially not the official name), all dressed up in his robes, he looks so gleeful, and never more so than when telling an Honourable Member to be so kind and shut up. This is the man who once told Tom Blenkinsop MP to “take a pill if necessary” and “take up yoga”. I like to imagine that our Speaker keeps a notebook in his bedside cabinet for whenever cutting inspiration strikes.

The flipside to all this, however, is that John Bercow has need for so many caustic swipes because, when in chamber, our MPs become largely indistinguishable from apes at the zoo. And that is the image we are projecting onto the international stage: you can trust Britain with climate change/the fight against terrorism/Ebola because we can shout louder, and we have no respect for basic discourse etiquette. We’re mavericks, y’all! But, of course, it’s not just what the rest of the world thinks of our way of doing things that we need to worry about – Prime Minister’s Questions is doing no good for the image of British politics within Britain either.

The chorus of hooting and hissing (not to mention the sideshow of gesturing and gesticulating) must be incredibly daunting as a new politician – particularly if you do not conform to the (largely true) stereotype of the old, white male. How can we expect to inspire fresh, exciting people to go into politics when its public face is so infantile – and, more importantly, inaccessible? As I see it, Prime Minister’s Questions, in its current format, is the single most off-putting thing in British politics right now. With an election turnout of fractionally over 34 per cent in the UK European elections earlier this year, we need to be doing everything in our power to engage the clearly disenfranchised electorate, but, for every viral initiative, and every national campaign, PMQs sets the cause back a good ten steps.

A key element of this country’s democratic system has devolved into utter farce. Wednesday lunchtimes have become akin to pantomimes, and the true aims of politics – the real issues at hand – have been drowned out by calls of ‘he’s behind you!’ It is totally uninspiring for the general population, and it encourages the wrong kind of people into standing: those in search of a good debate, rather than people who actually care about the issues being debated. In the words of Mean Girls: not grool.