It’s a bit of a shame Andrew Lloyd Webber quit the House of Lords a couple of years back, because today’s Queen’s Speech would have made a brilliant advert for Cats.
The House of Lords, after all, is made up of hundreds of grey, uncanny faces, draped in acres of fur, waiting and praying to be transported swiftly to the afterlife.
And just like Tom Hooper’s new movie - Boris Johnson’s second Queen’s Speech was pure nightmare fuel.
Little can prepare you for how preposterous the pomp of the State Opening of Parliament truly is.
Liz may have enjoyed a dress-down day, this being her second outing of the year - the logos on TV screens around the Lords have been crafted to point out we’re watching “State Opening Of Parliament: December 2019.”
But that’s not to say the whole day was a scruffy affair.
Presumably the irony of reading out the priorities of the ‘People’s Government’, while a young woman carries your oversized, magic, velvet santa hat on its own little stick, is not lost on Her Maj - who incidentally, seems to have a sniffly cold.
The great, good and political stuffing of the House of Lords filed dutifully through the Moses Room to have their ermine robes hiked on their shoulders and brushed down.
Most peers rent their red glad rags from a company - like graduation robes.
But the real House of Lords lifers buy their own gowns and - I’m told - pay for them to be stored somewhere until needed. Like a horse.
And take this, for example - which we assure you is from the day’s itinerary and not from a Dungeons and Dragons rulebook.
“As soon as Her Majesty has departed, the Crown, the Cap of Maintenance and the Sword of State are carried under escort to the Sovereign’s Entrance. The Gentlemen at Arms, having handed in their axes, proceed to the Sovereign’s Entrance, followed by the Yeomen of the Guard.
“The Household Cavalry close and dismiss.”
Boris Johnson too was on feline form this morning, although his grinning cat face was more Cheshire than Jellicle.
Try as he might, he couldn’t engage grumpy Jeremy Corbyn in conversation, the lame-duck Labour leader looking distressingly like he might be choking on a hairball on their amble over from the Commons.
Behind them, a sharp-elbowed Emily Thornberry was engaging in an eye-catchingly animated conversation with the SNP’s Ian Blackford.
Perhaps she was asking him about Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for another independence referendum. Perhaps she was asking him whether he’d seen the new Star Wars yet.
Either way, Blackford didn’t seem nearly as interested in having his face on every TV news broadcast for the rest of the day as Thornberry.
Back in the Lords, peers and assorted dignitaries watched with feint disdain as the Commons rabble piled in. Someone eventually had to shush them so the Queen could get on with her big solo performance.
Unusually for such a major constitutional event, there was a larger than usual amount of space available on the red benches.
Newly installed Lord Mann of the People (former Labour MP John) was in attendance, looking set to pounce on arch-foe Jeremy Corbyn if he so much as raised an eyebrow.
Met Commissioner Cressida Dick was up in the cheap seats, primed to pounce on Lord Mann if he pounced on Jeremy.
And badge-wearing Supreme Court legend Lady Hale was down the front, presumably delighted that the very future of British democracy is no longer something she personally has to worry about any more.
Peers are usually only too happy to clock in for their £305 allowance, to get a bit of warm, a nice lunch and a snooze on the big red sofas.
But unfortunately for the Prime Minister, today’s Queen’s Speech had one other thing in common with the new Cats movie.
Not many people went to see it, and many of those who did did so purely out of morbid curiosity.
