BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- It's supposed to be a serious affair, but after three months and 12 hearings, the Saddam Hussein trial has become like a TV sitcom steeped in Iraqi pop culture and local vernacular.

Interest in the trial has spiked since a new tough chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, took over last month and cracked down on the chaos that had marked the early hearings, which began Oct. 19.

Saddam and Barzan Ibrahim, his half brother and co-defendant, try their best to unsettle the stern new judge, using tactics from insulting his nonexistent mustache to showing up in long underwear.

Proceedings are broadcast on state television with a 20-minute delay. Many Iraqis who cannot follow the hearings during business hours watch in the evenings on satellite stations, some of which show the day's full hearing.

Perceptions of the trial among Iraqis depend in large part on their sectarian affiliations.

"The toughness of the new judge has turned the whole thing into a farce," said Ismail Ibrahim, a 45-year-old Sunni engineer who watches the hearings at work. "It's funny." Hatem Abbas Khalaf, a health worker from the holy Shiite city of Karbala, said he finds the whole affair "entertaining."

"It makes me gloat over the predicament of Saddam and his associates," he said.

Saddam's daughter even chipped in with her own critique of what goes on in the courtroom.

"This judge Raouf is the strangest cartoon character I have ever seen in my life," Raghad Saddam Hussein has told Al Arabiya television from Amman, Jordan.

Over two sessions Monday and Tuesday, Saddam and Ibrahim dominated the proceedings with some vintage courtroom theatrics. But in a series of instances, they appeared to break new ground.

"May your mustache be cursed," Saddam shouted at Abdel-Rahman.

It's a great insult among Iraq's Arab majority to curse a man's mustache, considered to be a symbol of honor among adult males. Abdel-Rahman is a Kurd and sports no mustache.

In another exchange, Abdel-Rahman tried to restore order Tuesday by banging his gavel.

"Hit your own head with that gavel," shouted Saddam, who insisted on addressing the court while seated, ignoring the judge's angry protests.

Ibrahim, Saddam's one-time intelligence chief, told Abdel-Rahman on Monday that he missed the judge's predecessor, Rizqar Mohammed Amin, another Kurd who stepped down in January amid charges that he did not do enough to rein in Saddam and Ibrahim.

"I will write a letter to judge Rizqar thanking him," Ibrahim told Abdel-Rahman.

"'Afiyah', Rizqar," said Saddam, using the Iraqi Arabic slang for "bravo," a word Saddam often used to praise his officers before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Saddam, Ibrahim and the other six defendants are on trial for the killing of nearly 150 Shiites after the former president survived an assassination attempt in 1982 in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail north of Baghdad. The eight face death by hanging of convicted.

Ibrahim, who once enjoyed a reputation as a womanizer, was by far the more provocative in this week's sessions.

This week, he showed up in his long underwear to protest Abdel-Rahman's handling of the hearings. He sat on the floor of the defendants' pen with his back to the judges for most of Monday's hearing.

On Tuesday, he scolded the judge for ordering him to be quiet. "Don't tell me to shut up with this hand gesture," Ibrahim snapped. "I am a person like you, if not even better."

He insisted on calling a witness "comrade" — the title used by members of Saddam's Baath party.

"Don't call him comrade. Call him witness number one," Abdel-Rahman said.

"You call him what you like and I call him what I like," Ibrahim replied.