Stop the War campaigners today dusted down their grim reaper costumes and picked up their 'witty' B-LIAR placards to welcome the arrival of Tony Blair to the Iraq War Inquiry.
For those interested - or merely unemployed - the whole day's events were broadcast on BBC News with a one-minute delay, to avoid the disclosure of national secrets. Sound exciting? Well not exactly.
The former prime minister arrived through a side entrance early this morning to avoid protestors and take up his seat as the star witness of the inquiry, which has been set-up to identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict.
For your benefit, I disciplined myself to watch all six hours - yes, six whole bloody hours - of proceedings.
Sitting in front of a five-member panel constituting senior civil servants, academics and lawyers - and with his back to families of servicemen and women killed in the conflict, the day promised to be tense.
However, those expecting a televised Judge Judy-style bashing will have been disappointed with the tone of the proceedings. Demonstrating the statesmanship that swept him to three consecutive election victories, Blair remained relatively unruffled throughout, fixed with the facial expression of a schoolchild being reprimanded by his headmaster for a minor playground discretion.
The inquest was a very English affair. All polite questions, pleases, thanks yous and knowing glances. Blair received more of a grilling last month from that famous in-depth investigative political correspondent Fern Britton, who - on her day off from hosting the drab ITV show All Star Mr and Mrs - managed to get him to admit that he would have still invaded Iraq if Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Despite Blair's absence from politics for the best part of two years, he displayed the primary skill essential for any politician worth his tax-dodging salary - the ability to duck interviewers' questions.
Looking like a man who has spent too much time sun-bathing in the Middle East, rather than solving the region's political crises, Blair defended his decision to go to war, denied placing pressure on the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to legalise the conflict and downplayed any agreement with US president George Bush at a private meeting in 2002
But this isn't a hatchet job on the former Labour Party leader. He did, throughout the six hours make some valid points, despite his failure to offer any humility or an apology, which drew wide-spread anger inside the inquiry.
"This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception. It's a decision," he said.
"And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given ten years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take?"
The consequences of his decision are still apparent in Iraqi's blood-soaked marketplaces and the 150,000 grieving mothers and fathers that litter the country - with or without this pointless exercise.
Whether it managed to distract the nation's sofa-stricken population from Murder She Wrote, Loose Women or Cash in the Attic is questionable, but the BBC's decision to broadcast it should be applauded. Politics is an issue that affects us all, so we should take a more active role in it.
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