You always knew when John Key was under pressure, you'd hear a fierce suck in of breath through his teeth which he'd almost use as a mechanism to stall before giving an answer.
With Bill English it's a deep, uneven breath followed by a short cough and he's been doing a lot of that since that pesky Nicky Hager forced his way back on to the election year platform with his Hit & Run expose.
Even though be privately admits to loving the Prime Minister's job, that he's coveted from the time John Key entered Parliament shortly before he lost the leadership, there must be times that Bill English wants to stop and scream out for help.
Much of the job is crisis management and he's had quite a lot of that over the past few weeks, from the growing call to charge for exported water to an inquiry into what when on in Afghanistan when the SAS led an attack on two villages there.
The argument boils down to this. Hager and his co-author Jon Stephenson say they killed six civilians, including a three year old girl.