Attending Fair Pint's Westminster summit last week I marvelled at the lack of political representation at the event.
Three members of the Business & Enterprise Select committee - whose report on the pub trade was, after all, so damning - were due to take part but failed to show up, including Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik.
Loathe as I am to agree with anything uttered by Sir Nicholas Winterton - who did show up - I shared the Tory grandee's wonder at the non-existent turnout of BEC MPs to the get-together, the subject of which was presumably close to their collective hearts, and taking place in their own backyard.
When we see MPs on television programmes such as 'Question Time' we're supposed to be impressed by their knowledge and oratory skills, yet sadly I'm never taken in by the vast majority of our elected representatives when actually encountered in the flesh.
For all their grandising they are often quite ordinary and quite unimpressive. Many appear to possess little inkling about what it is like out here in the Real World™, yet see fit to act and behave as if they are 'all-knowing'.
I'm quite sure there are some supremely dedicated MPs who work tirelessly, putting their constituents before party politics. But these have got to be in the laudable minority, surely?
I don't know how many of you watch 'The Daily Show with John Stewart' but it is one of the few things on television that makes the effort of switching the thing on worth doing.
Stewart, an American presenter/commentator/comedian, takes a decidedly acerbic look at US politics and politicians and uses wit and the bleedin' obvious to burst the bubble of those who seek to hoodwink the American people with hyperbole, obfuscation and downright bullsh*t.
We ought to have our own Daily Show over here. True, we have satirists such as Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune who persistently poke fun at the political establishment.
But despite the efforts of B, B & F we don't have anyone who can get to the nub of the ridiculousness of our own political heavyweights quite like Stewart can. And let's be honest, many of them are ridiculousness personified.
I spoke to a regional brewer last week who'd had dealings with some of the so-called senior ministers at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, as it was called a few years back.
He marvelled at their ignorance of the Real World™, despite their being ready to pounce on unsuspecting taxpayers and businesses with ill-thought out legislation that achieved little but pain and a dent in the profit and loss account of those affected by such legislation.
There's a case for MPs being required to have some amount of life experience before being able to tell us how to lead our own lives.
In the same way as it does brewing companies and pub operators no harm to welcome to their ranks those who have retail experience outside of the licensed on-trade world, so too our politicians ought to come to Parliament somewhat better-rounded than appears to have been the case lately.
Or is that asking too much in this day and age?