Even during the drizzle debate, Stephens stood phlegmatically at the base line playing no part in the discussions as the crowed slow-clapped and hooted.

The almost phlegmatically fearless child has become an anguished, supersensitive, self-absorbed man whose incoherent obsessions are driving him mad.

The remark annoyed some of the Pakistanis, who viewed it as a crude characterization of a politically delicate process; others took it more phlegmatically.