No-one under the age of 40 is likely to believe this but there was a time when the UUP was interesting.
Too interesting for its own good.
It was a godsend for journalists for whom watching the once mighty behemoth rip itself apart in public was a full-time job.
Whether it was its former HQ Cunningham House, the Ramada Hotel or the Ulster Hall, meetings of the UUP’s ruling council were the gift that kept on giving to the party’s great detriment.
It’s survival – or more specifically David Trimble’s survival as the leader of Unionism – was regarded as so crucial to the peace process that Tony Blair once postponed an assembly election he feared it would lose.
But he couldn’t avoid the inevitable.
The Democratic Unionist Party won the subsequent poll, eventually taking the spoils by going into government with Sinn Fein.
And the UUP? It became an also-ran and there it remains until now.
Jon Burrows is the latest new beginning and arguably one of the most interesting.
He’s from a non-political background and seems prepared to take on all-comers no matter how unpopular that might make him with the party’s old guard.
But that old guard has failed to return the party to anything like its previous lofty position.
Now Burrows intends to try doing it his way.
At the very least it should be fun to watch.