There wasn't a spare seat to be had in the gallery of the General Assembly, as people packed in to hear US President Donald Trump speak.
A frisson of nervous anticipation swept across the room as he approached the podium.
After all, this is the man who, in the past eight months, has slapped punitive trade tariffs on most of the countries represented here, pulled out of long-standing international agreements and even toyed with US annexation of some of their territories.
Think Greenland and Panama.
But here he was on the world’s biggest stage, telling everyone how great America was under his leadership.
"We are the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close," he told delegates.
That sounded like undiplomatic language to unleash at the headquarters of global diplomacy.
But this was Mr Trump in free-wheeling mode, veering off script and speaking 40 minutes over his allotted 15-minute timeslot.
The mood lightened when Mr Trump described getting stuck on an escalator on arrival at the UN.
"If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, you would have fallen," he said, addressing Melania Trump who sat on the sidelines.
They laughed too when he complained that the teleprompter was broken, saying the operator was going to be in big trouble.
But there was somewhat less mirth detected in the room when he followed up with a stinging criticism of the United Nations, saying it was failing to live up to its potential.
"I ended seven wars," he said, referring to ceasefires the US played a role in brokering, adding that "everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize".
But, he said: "sadly, in all cases the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them."
He added that he "never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalising the deal".
"These are the two things I got from the United Nations.. a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter," he said.
Later it transpired that the teleprompter operator was, in fact, from the American delegation.
Being inundated with questions about the escalator incident, the UN Secretary General spokesman's office put out a statement saying a videographer, again with the US team, "may have inadvertently triggered the safety function," bringing it to a standstill.
But that came after President Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had called for UN staffers to be investigated and fired for sabotage.
Mr Trump’s rebuke of the UN sounded like bad news for officials, already reeling from the effects of US cuts.
Many would have seen it as an unwelcome sign that the US was preparing to pull back from the UN even further.
But later, following a meeting with the UN Secretary General António Guterres, Mr Trump seemed to perform a volte-face, saying he was "one hundred percent" behind the United Nations.
Music to the ears, no doubt, of Mr Guterres.
Back to the speech, much of it focused on migration, a theme Mr Trump returned to several times.
"Your countries are going to hell," he said, addressing European leaders.
Delegates exchanged glances.
I would not be surprised if that phrase goes down in UN history, perhaps filed alongside former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s immortal words when he took the podium in 2006.
"Yesterday the devil came here," he said, referring to then US President George Bush, "and it still smells of sulphur".
European nations were being "destroyed" by migration, the current US President went on.
"In America," he said, "we've taken bold action to swiftly shut down uncontrolled migration".
He rounded on the UN again, accusing the body of "funding an assault on Western countries and their borders".
"The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them," he said.
Mr Trump then launched a full-throttle attack on green policies, calling global warming "a hoax," renewable energy "a joke" and windmills "pathetic".
As he spoke, I spotted one diplomat shaking their head in disbelief.
Later he paired his favourite topics of migration and climate policies together, calling them a "double-tailed monster" that "destroys everything in its wake".
"You’re doing it because you want to be nice, you want to be politically correct, and you're destroying your heritage," he said, in a comment again directed at Europe.
Uncomfortable murmuring floated up from the delegates’ floor to the gallery.
While Mr Trump heaped praise on himself for "ending seven wars", he admitted that solving the Ukraine conflict had been much harder than he anticipated.
He said he thought his relationship with President Putin would have made it easy.
"But, you know, in war you never know what's going to happen," he said.
"There are always lots of surprises, both good and bad."
Later, after a one-on-one meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN, Mr Trump posted on Truth Social calling Russia a "paper tiger".
In what appeared to be a major shift from his previous stance that Ukraine would have to concede land, he wrote that it was "in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form".
That certainly lent credence to the notion, held by some observers, that Mr Trump tends to reflect the view of the last person to have his ear.
On Gaza, Mr Trump told delegates the focus should be on getting Israeli hostages released – he got a round of applause for that.
He slammed the recent spate of Palestinian recognition, as a "reward" for Hamas' atrocities – a remark that went unapplauded.
Stony silence also met his comments on US military strikes on the boats travelling from Venezuela, which he said were running drugs.
Legal experts at the time decried the strikes as illegal under international law. Venezuela called it "murder".
At the General Assembly though, Mr Trump said he was warning drug smugglers: "we will blow you out of existence."
The strikes had been referenced by the previous speaker, Brazil’s leader Luiz Ignacio da Silva – a known critic of the US President - who called the use of lethal force outside of a war context tantamount to "executing people without trial".
But Mr Trump said the two men had crossed paths backstage and had a hug.
"I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced," adding, to chuckles from the hall, "for 39 seconds, we had excellent chemistry".
He said the pair were due to meet next week.
Overall, the atmosphere in the room was cordial.
When delegates laughed it appeared to be with him this time – a stark contrast to his first address to the General Assembly way back in 2018, when they seemed to laugh at him.
He left the stage with something of a spring in his step, pausing for a moment or two to smile, wave and even point to delegates sitting near the front.
At the end of it all, people spilled out of the gallery, somewhat bemused. The speech had covered so much ground, veering violently from jokes to threats, it was hard to know what to make of it.
But one thing is clear - Mr Trump is upending decades of US support for some of the UN’s core work – especially on climate and protection of refugees.
Despite the joviality yesterday, in no small part over escalators and teleprompters, his warmth towards the United Nations may not last beyond his return to the White House.
