Westminster eyes this week are on Ann Widdecombe - the Tory Party's latest and very own Spice Girl. Everybody has their own wicked take on William Hague's shadow cabinet reshuffle. This cracker was attributed to the veteran broadcaster Sir Robin Day. And it neatly encapsulates the fickle, nay treacherous, course of political fashion.
Not that long ago Ms Widdecombe - who converted to Rome over the issue of women priests - was known as the Doris Karloff of the Conservative frontbench, having cheered the party's law-and-order brigade with her stout defence of a policy requiring a female prisoner to remain chained to her bed in a maternity ward.
But her media rehabilitation began when she turned the knife on Michael Howard after last year's election rout, helping kill-off his leadership pretensions with the delicious observation that the former Home Secretary had "something of the night" about him.
Since then the former prisons minister has gone from strength to strength, giving vent to her pretty predictable opinions at any opportunity, hosting a television programme, and having her hair done in a one-off concession to the image makers.
In fairness, she has also demonstrated along the way something singularly lacking in the Tory Party as a whole: an appetite for the politics of opposition and an ability to successfully mock Tony Blair.
Given the astonishing levels of piety achieved by the Labour leader after just one year in power, many will think that entitlement enough to the elevation Mr Hague handed her on Monday morning.
Given her considerable forensic skills, Ms Widdecombe will certainly ensure that health questions remain a lively Commons affair, at least for as long as Mr Blair leaves Frank Dobson with the responsibility for defending the government over hospital closures and rising waiting lists.
As for the rest? Lively is hardly the word most frequently used to describe it.
Reshuffles are meat and drink to the political journalist. Great forests are routinely wasted on speculation about who is on their way up or down the ladder.
Yet, for the most part, as one Tory insider observed last night, they have little or no impact on the public at large. Recalling John Major's repeated attempts to relaunch his beleaguered government, all to no avail, he plainly felt for Mr Hague's added problem in conveying the importance of it all from the depleted ranks of the Opposition benches.
Mr Hague's problems were compounded by the fact that his re-ordering of the Conservative cast came as the nation was reeling from the news that the Spice Girls had effected a reshuffle of their own, and that Glenn Hoddle's final selection meant Gazza would be home even earlier than might have been expected.
On a more serious level, the immediate potential importance of it all had to be set against the polling evidence which shows Labour with a still-commanding 30-point lead, and Mr Blair more popular than Mr Hague even among Tory voters.
Yet it is, of course, important - not least because of Mr Blair's commanding position in parliament and the country, and the need for an effective opposition to a disturbingly powerful and, some think, already very arrogant executive. It is also critically important if Tory Party morale is to be revived. There is no doubt that Conservative supporters in the country desperately want to see their spokesmen holding the government to account. There will be general relief that people like Sir Brian Mawhinney and Stephen Dorrell - hangovers from the last government without incentive because they were never going to be in the next - have finally vacated the stage.
True, Mr Howard remains an unhappy reminder of times past. But Mr Hague has had to construct his team from a much-reduced pool of talent. And some of his appointments should prove highly effective over time. Certainly, Francis Maude should be capable of providing a decent opposition to Chancellor Brown.
Peter Lilley will fare better as a policy wonk, in the Rab Butler post-1945 role. Michael Ancram, a good performer with a good feel for the party and its instincts, is remembered as the last successful Scottish chairman before the great decline which coincided with the Thatcher ascendancy. Theirs is now the task of preparing the Tories for the next general election. They know the British public is nowhere yet near the point of forgiveness. They will have to rely on the old Tory virtue of patience and Macmillan's famous dictum: events.
But Mr Hague will be hoping they discover Macmillan's exhortation, too, that Opposition is to be enjoyed - and with beneficial spin-offs for his leadership. For if the local elections last month confirmed that May 1997 was rock-bottom, they also spelt out that only a sharp improvement in next year's European contest will remove the question-mark over Mr Hague's tenure. If it fails to materialise, Michael Portillo will be thankful that his leader found no role for him this week.