While outside the Festival Hall protest against BP's littany of human rights and environmental crimes flowed undeterred by heavy security, inside the company's big PR event steadily fell apart.
A succession of damning points were made by members of the audience - displacement in Colombia, impending devastation in Alaska, breach of myriad agreements along the BTC pipeline, greed on the part of the directors with their obscene "compensation". These were ignored, mocked or flatly denied by the fat cat in the chair, who did however become increasingly riled and uncomfortable.
Alas for that stageful of crooks, no applause, no self congratulatory smiles all round, no relief as the end of proceedings arrived. Sutherland's speech was drowned out by a furious protester cateloguing BP,s crimes, adding complicity in war (the board's links with BAE had been frankly celebrated in an opening speech), brutality and ecological disaster in West Papua and climate change.
Earlier, Browne had delivered one of his characteristic portentious meaningless speeches against a background of glam projections, including "meeting the challenges of climate change".No reference in the entire proceedings, however, to how BP's commitment to pumping out the rest of the world's 40 year reserves of oil will do this, no other reference to climate change at all in fact.
So it was fitting that BP's big day out should end in a hail of denunciation from the floor, sour faced directors leaving the stage in ignominy, hardly a word of Sutherland's address having got across.
Good on everybody who made this such a bad day for BP in so many ways.