The Queen's Speech to Parliament is one of the great state occasions and MPs and peers look forward to it with relish.
This is where they hear, often for the first time, what the government plans for the next session.
And in the Commons debate which follows the Queen's words in the Lords, the leader of the opposition gets his chance to tear the programme apart.
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And, of course, the whole thing is wrapped up in arcane pageantry which many may find ridiculous but which others believe underpins what makes Britain great.
But this year the entire spectacle failed to excite.
Widely leaked
There was nothing in the government's announcement that had not been widely and accurately leaked beforehand.
William Hague turned in a show-stopping performance which was littered with jokes, but which virtually ignored the policies included in the announcement.
And Tony Blair followed suit, using his Commons performance to try and put the Tories on the spot over exactly what their polices were, while saying little about his own programme.
To cap it all, the pageantry had lost a little of its usual sparkle.
Thanks to the abolition of the vast majority of the hereditary peers and the "modernisation" of the procession leading the Queen into the Lords, the whole thing looked a little more mundane than usual.
The Queen's English
And the clearest sign that there was no real excitement in the announcement came when members of the media became excited over the fact that the Queen had split an infinitive in her speech.
Indeed she had - when she announced the government would make it unlawful for public bodies "to racially discriminate".
It's not quite up there with Captain Kirk's "to boldly go", but the fact that it came from the Queen outraged some.
They even claimed she had hesitated before reading the words - which had been written for her by civil servants and, some claim, Alastair Campbell.
Others simply shrugged their shoulders and declared: "It's her language, she can do what she wants to it."
Wish to control
But the fact that it was even an issue was proof that the rest of the occasion had failed to whip up a storm.
It was mostly a result of Labour's infamous desire to control every announcement the government makes.
The speech may have included an unprecedented 28 bills, but there was not a single initiative which had not been widely reported beforehand.
The key bills on welfare, transport, crime, local government and the countryside are all significant and will contain some measures - such as the part-privatisation of air traffic control - will prove hugely controversial and could spark backbench rebellions.
In the Commons debate, Mr Hague made much of what he claimed had been left out of the speech - on education and families, for example.
And he delivered one of his vintage performances shot through with jokes at the government's expense.
Turning on Transport Secretary John Prescott he declared: "People work hard and save hard to own a car. They don't want to be told they can't drive it by a Deputy Prime Minister whose idea of a park-and-ride scheme is to park one Jaguar in order to ride away in the other."
Telling the truth
And effectively accusing the prime minister of being a habitual liar he said Mr Blair found it "difficult to tell the truth about many things - however trivial.
"Three years ago he confided to Des O'Connor how, aged 14, he stowed away on a plane bound from Newcastle for the Bahamas.
"The only problem was that in the 61 year history of Newcastle Airport there's never been a flight to the Bahamas."
Blair the football fan
During an interview with a local radio station in 1997 and speaking of his passion for football "the prime minister reminisced about watching his favourite Newcastle player, centre forward Jackie Milburn, from a seat behind one of the goals at St James's Park.
"Two problems with this - seats weren't installed behind the goals until the 1990s and Jackie Milburn left the club when the prime minister was four-years-old," he said
It was great stuff which brought howls of laughter from his own side but which, ultimately did little to address the government's programme.
Mr Blair hit back, claiming Mr Hague was great at making after dinner speeches, adding: "and if Michael Portillo comes in, you'll be making many more of them."
He defended the government's record, attacked the Tories for having no policies and adopted a technique he has perfected at question time - challenging the opposition to answer a series of questions about where it stands on key issues.
Packed programme
Blasting Mr Hague's party as "pathetic" he returned to a familiar theme, claiming the Tories were drifting further and further to the right.
"It is Thatcherism without restraint and the British people do not want it.
"It's a clear choice between a new Labour Party that can address the challenges of the new millennium and a Conservative Party more extreme than ever before," he said.
Mr Blair now has a tightly-packed parliamentary session in front of him with more bills to push through than in either of his previous sessions.
Many of the details of the announcements made in the Queen's speech will come later and only then will it become clear how much trouble he will get from the Tories and his own backbenchers in pushing the programme through.
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Speech fails to deliver - Hague
(17 Nov 99 | UK Politics)
Queen unveils packed programme
(17 Nov 99 | UK Politics)
Queen's Speech in full
(17 Nov 99 | UK Politics)
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